Indonesian police officer killed in suicide explosion; 10 others injured

A police officer was murdered and 10 others were injured in a suicide bombing attack on a police station in the Indonesian city of Bandung on Wednesday, according to authorities. The suspect is an Islamist terrorist.

Agus Sujatno, 34, a member of the pro-Islamic State group Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) who had previously served four years in a maximum security jail for his involvement in a 2017 bombing, was the assailant according to police.

At a news conference in Bandung, the capital of the West Java province, national police commander Listyo Sigit stated that “the fingerprint test and the face recognition identified the offender as Agus Sujatno, or Abu Muslim.”

After completing his term for a prior bombing in Bandung, he was released in September 2021, according to Sigit.

The explosion on Wednesday happened at the Bandung Astana Anyar police station about 8:00 am.

West Java police chief Suntana, who like many Indonesians uses by one name, stated, “When our officers were completing the morning roll call, a man tried to enter the office forcibly and officers tried to stop him.”

He told reporters, “The offender insisted on getting closer to our cops while brandishing a knife, and then an explosion happened.

An explosion that was very loud, according to a witness who was close to the police station.

“It was extremely noisy, yet I heard a bang.
I peeked inside the police station and noticed billowing thick smoke “Didin Khaerudin, the owner of an adjacent kiosk, told AFP that following the explosion, police ordered all businesses to close.

Later, a second device was discovered nearby, and the police bomb squad safely detonated it, according to Suntana.

One of the injured, who, according to him, were largely struck by broken glass and debris, was a bystander.

The blue motorbike the attacker was riding had paper notes attached to it, according to the police.

The communications exhorted people to launch a battle against law enforcement and attacked the Indonesian criminal code as being the work of “infidels,” according to the police.

A stack of documents that rejected a recently passed criminal code amendment was also discovered by police at the location.

In Indonesia, which formally recognizes five other religions in addition to Islam, some Islamist extremists have demanded the adoption of sharia law.

Other assaults carried out by JAD members include a string of suicide bombings in May 2018 against a police station and a number of churches in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city.

Twelve individuals died in such attacks, which were carried out by families with children.

The largest Muslim-majority country in the world, Indonesia, has long battled Islamist militancy.

Al-Qaeda-linked attackers detonated bombs at a bar and nightclub on Bali, an Indonesian tourist island, in what was Southeast Asia’s worst militant attack. More than 200 people were killed.