The exchange at the police headquarters in downtown Jakarta comes days after two suicide bombers attacked a cathedral in the city of Makassar on Sulawesi island, injuring about 20 others. — AFP file photo
JAKARTA (March 31): Gunfire was heard in the compound of Indonesia’s national police headquarters today, local media reported, with images from the scene showing what appeared to be a lone figure being shot.
Images from MetroTV and other major broadcasters showed what appeared to be a lone figure being shot before falling to the ground.
The body lay motionless afterward as police surrounded it, with the reports calling it an “alleged terror attack”.
Police did not respond to a request to verify the reports.
The exchange at the police headquarters in downtown Jakarta comes days after two suicide bombers attacked a cathedral in the city of Makassar on Sulawesi island, injuring 20 people.
The newlywed couple who attacked the church belonged to pro-Islamic State extremist group Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), police have said, warning of more possible attacks.
Sunday’s explosion at the main Catholic cathedral in Makassar took place just after congregants finished celebrating Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week, which commemorates Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem.
Police outposts have been frequent targets of Indonesian extremists in the past.
The world’s most populous Muslim-majority country has long struggled with Islamic militancy and has suffered a number of devastating attacks in the past two decades.
The 2002 Bali bombings were the country’s worst-ever terror attack, killing more than 200 people, mainly foreign tourists.
Indonesia’s security forces regularly arrest suspected militants and attacks have often been low-level and have targeted domestic security forces.
Before Sunday, one of the country’s last major deadly attacks was in 2018, when a dozen people were killed after a family of suicide bombers blew themselves up at churches during Sunday services in Indonesia’s second-biggest city Surabaya.
The family — including two daughters, aged nine and 12 — and another family of five, which carried out the suicide bombing of a police headquarters, all belonged to the same Quran study group and were linked to JAD, which has pledged allegiance to the so-called Islamic State.
Formed in 2015, JAD gained notoriety the following year for a gun and suicide bomb attack in the capital Jakarta that killed four civilians and four attackers — including one who blew himself up at a Starbucks outlet.
It was the first attack claimed by IS in South-east Asia.
JAD was also implicated in a 2019 cathedral suicide bombing in the Philippines committed by a married Indonesian couple which killed worshippers and security forces. — AFP