JAKARTA: A suspected Islamic militant has launched an attack on an Indonesian police station in the country’s second-biggest city, slashing one officer with a sickle, before being shot and taken into custody, police officials said yesterday.
The 30-year-old suspect entered the police station in Surabaya in East Java on Saturday afternoon – Indonesia’s Independence Day – and attacked the officer on duty, according to a police intelligence report confirmed by East Java police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera.
A second officer suffered a bruised face during the incident, the report said.
National Police spokesman Iqbal Alqudusy said the suspect appeared to have been acting alone and became radicalised by reading material posted online by Aman Abdurahman, a militant who was sentenced to death last year for masterminding a string of deadly militant attacks across Indonesia.
Abdurahman is considered the ideological leader of Jemaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), a loose grouping of Islamic State sympathizers in Indonesia.
The police officer who was slashed was being treated in hospital. It was unclear the extent of injuries sustained by the attacker, who was being interrogated. — Reuters