Asia

Asia

Suspected suicide bombers kill 3 police officers, wound 10 in Jakarta - UPDATED

Suspected suicide bombers kill 3 police officers, wound 10 in Jakarta - <span style="color: red;">UPDATED

24 May 2017 18:52 (UTC +04:00)

Two suspected suicide bombers killed three Indonesian police officers and injured 10 people on Wednesday night in twin blasts near a bus station in the eastern part of the capital, police said, APA reports quoting Reuters.

The blasts went off five minutes apart at Jakarta's Kampung Melayu terminal, police said.

National Police spokesman Setyo Wasisto said three officers had been killed, and that examination of the scene had shown that there appeared to have been two suicide bombers, not one as originally thought.

Five officers and five civilians were wounded, he said.

Indonesia has suffered a series of mostly low-level attacks by Islamic State sympathizers in the last 17 months, but Wasisto said police had not confirmed any Islamist motive for Wednesday's bombing.

"The police officers were on duty to guard a group of people who were holding a parade. The parade hadn't passed yet when the blast happened," Wasisto told a news conference.

"The two suspects were both male. Their identities will be released later," he said.

Wasisto said the explosives appeared to have been packed into pressure cookers. A similar bomb was used in February in the city of Bandung by a lone attacker, killed by police, whom authorities suspected of having links to a radical network sympathetic to Islamic State.

Authorities in the world's biggest Muslim-majority nation are increasingly worried about a surge in radicalism, driven in part by a new generation of militants inspired by Islamic State.

In January 2016, four militants killed four people in a gun and bomb assault in the heart of Jakarta.

***

20:17

Indonesian police said on Wednesday that a suspected suicide bomber and a police officer were killed in explosions near a bus station in the eastern part of the capital, Jakarta, APA reports quoting Reuters.

There were two blasts in Kampung Melayu that went off five minutes apart late in the evening, police said in a statement.

It said some people, including police officers, were wounded and being taken to a nearby hospital.

A hospital official speaking on Metro TV said two policemen and a civilian were being treated, and all three were conscious. Another TV report said five people were wounded.

Authorities in the world's biggest Muslim-majority nation have been increasingly worried about a resurgence in radicalism, driven in part by a new generation of militants inspired by Islamic State.

There has been a series of low-level attacks linked to Islamic State since January 2016, when four militants mounted a gun and bomb assault in the heart of Jakarta.

Eight people were killed in that attack, including the militants.