Indonesia Bombings: Surabaya Police Headquarters Attacked By Family Of 5, Several Casualties

A day after the deadly suicide attack in three churches in Surabaya, Indonesia, four suicide bombers on motorcycles blew themselves up in front of the police headquarters in the city Monday.

According to police, one person died and at least 10, including four police personnel, were injured in the incident that happened at 8:50 a.m. local time (9:50 p.m. EDT, Sunday) at a security post at the entrance of the police complex, the Guardian reported. Police confirmed the suicide bombers were members of the same family and an eight-year-old was also present with them. The child is being treated in a hospital nearby.

“There were four perpetrators riding two motorcycles who have been confirmed dead, their identity is still being verified,” said East Java police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera. “A child who was with them, an eight-year-old girl... has been taken to the hospital.”

Police suspect an Islamic State (ISIS)-inspired network, Jemaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) was responsible for the attack.

“Clearly it's a suicide bombing,” Mangera said at a media briefing. “We can't be open [about] all details yet because we are still identifying victims at the scene and the crime scene is being handled.”

This comes hours after a bomb explosion in an apartment building in East Java killed a couple and their child and injured two other children. According to a report in the Guardian, police received information about a blast in the Wonocolo apartment building in Sidoarjo at about 9 p.m. local time (10 a.m. EDT) on Sunday. Local residents informed police they heard multiple blasts from the building’s fifth floor.

Police have not yet confirmed whether this had any links to the church suicide attacks in Surabaya. On Sunday, a family of six detonated themselves in coordinated attacks in three churches in Surabaya, killing seven civilians and injuring 40. The suicide bombers included two girls aged 12 and nine and a 16-year-old boy. These were the deadliest attacks in Indonesia since the 2002 Bali bombings.

Indonesian police chief Tito Karnavian, said the family members were part of JAD. During investigation, police found one of the suicide bombers, identified as Dita Oepriarto, was the head of a local JAD cell. On Sunday, he dropped off his wife, Puji Kuswati, and two daughters at Diponegoro Indonesian Christian Church. The woman and the girls had bombs strapped to them. Oepriarto then drove his bomb-laden car into the Surabaya Centre Pentecostal Church, police said, BBC reported.

The first attack was carried out by Oepriarto’s two sons at the Santa Maria Catholic Church using a motorcycle at around 7:30 a.m. local time (8:30 p.m. EDT), which was followed by the explosion at Diponegoro Indonesian Christian Church five minutes later, police said.

Karnavian said the family had returned to Indonesia from Syria, a large portion of which was under the control of the ISIS group until recently.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who visited the scene of one of the attacks on Monday, dubbed the act as "barbaric" and ordered police to "look into and break up networks of perpetrators.”