Jakarta, Indonesia
AP
—
Indonesian authorities have announced that they have identified a 17-year-old boy as the suspect in the attack that shook a high school mosque during Friday prayers in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, injuring at least 55 people, mostly students.
Police have so far dismissed speculation that the explosion was a terrorist attack, saying they are investigating.
Witnesses told a local television station that at least two loud explosions were heard inside and outside the mosque shortly after a sermon began at around noon at the mosque of state high school SMA 72, located in the naval compound in north Jakarta’s Kelapa Gading district.
Students fled in panic as gray smoke filled the mosque.
“The information I have is that the suspect is undergoing surgery,” Deputy House Speaker Sukhumi Dasko Ahmad told reporters after visiting the student victim at the hospital. “The suspect is a 17-year-old male student,” he said, without giving details.
National Police Chief Ristoyo Sigit confirmed at a press conference at the presidential palace in Jakarta that the suspect was one of two students who were seriously injured in the explosion and were undergoing surgery.
“We have identified the person believed to be the culprit,” Sigit said after attending an event with President Prabowo Subianto at the palace. “Currently, our officials are carrying out a thorough investigation to determine the identity of the suspect and the circumstances in which he lived, including his home.”
Sigit said police investigators are still gathering all sorts of information to determine a motive, including how the suspect assembled a toy submachine gun with inscriptions such as “The 14 Words. To Agartha” and “Brenton Tarrant: Welcome to Hell.”
The “14 Words,” a term commonly used to refer to a white supremacist slogan, was used by Brenton Tarrant, who was responsible for the 2019 mass shooting at a mosque and Islamic center in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed 51 people and injured dozens more.
“The murder weapon turned out to be a toy gun with a specific pattern on it, and we are investigating to determine the motive, including how it was assembled and carried out the attack,” Sigit said, adding that the teenage male suspect was a student at the same school.
Most of the victims suffered injuries from broken glass and burns. The cause of the explosion was not immediately known, but Jakarta Police Chief Asep Eddy Suheli said the explosion came from near the mosque’s loudspeaker.
He said the injured were rushed to a nearby hospital, and 20 students remained hospitalized with burns, three of them seriously.
“Police are investigating the scene to determine the cause,” he said, calling for speculation that the incident was an attack to be dispelled before the police investigation is complete.
Videos circulating on social media showed dozens of uniformed students storming the school’s basketball court, some covering their ears with their hands, apparently to protect themselves from the sound of the explosion.
Some of the injured were carried on stretchers to waiting cars.
Shocked relatives of the students gathered at centers set up at Yarshi and Cempaka Putih hospitals seeking information about their loved ones. Parents told television stations that their children suffered injuries from being hit in the head, legs and hands by sharp claws and explosive fragments.
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, was hit by a major militant attack in 2002 when Al Qaeda bombed the resort island of Bali, killing 202 people, most of them foreign tourists.
The next few years saw small-scale, low-fatality attacks, primarily targeting people considered infidels by the government, police, counterterrorism forces, and even armed groups.
Friday’s attack was not the first attack on a mosque. In 2011, an Islamic extremist blew himself up at a mosque inside a police station in Cirebon during Friday prayers, injuring 30 people.
In December 2022, a convicted Islamic extremist and bomb maker released from prison the previous year blew himself up at a police station in West Java province, killing one police officer and injuring 11 others.
Since 2023, the Southeast Asian country has been experiencing what authorities call the “zero-attack phenomenon,” and they attribute the stable security situation to the government.
