Surabaya blast at police headquarters carried out by family riding two motorbikes

Updated

Sorry, this video has expired Video: CCTV vision shows the moment the bomb goes off (ABC News)

The two families behind recent suicide bombing attacks in Indonesia's second-largest city were friends, police have said.

Key points: At least one vehicle bomb explodes outside Surabaya police headquarters, 10 injured

Extremists linked to Jemaah Ansurat Daulah group suspected to be responsible

Follows another attack on a different police station in the city last night

An Indonesian family brought its eight-year-old daughter to a suicide bomb attack it launched on the police headquarters in Surabaya, authorities said, a day after members of another family conducted coordinated suicide bombings on three city churches that killed 12 people.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack outside the police building, the Islamist militant group's Amaq news agency said, without providing evidence.

National police chief Tito Karnavian said the girl, who was with two of the attackers on a motorcycle, survived being thrown by the blast at Surabaya's police headquarters. The attack killed the four perpetrators. Six civilians and four officers were wounded.

The attack came just hours after police said the family that carried out the church bombings included girls aged nine and 12.

He said the church bombers and the police headquarters attackers were friends, as were another family whose homemade bombs exploded in their apartment Sunday night.

Police suspect the new attacks are also by extremists linked to the Jemaah Ansurat Daulah group.

Director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, Sidney Jones, says it has been a long time since any one group has shown the capacity to carry out such a series of attacks.

"This does seem to be part of a coordinated series of actions, and that would also be the first time we had such coordinated activities since the Christmas eve bombings in 2000," she told PM.

However, she said we do not know for sure whether all the attackers were part of the same group.

"Clearly it's a suicide bombing," East Java police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera told a media briefing.

"We can't be open [about] all details yet because we are still identifying victims at the scene and the crime scene is being handled."

He said the full extent of casualties was unclear.

Sorry, this video has expired Video: Witness footage shows a young girl being carried from the blast site (ABC News)

Footage of the attack shows two motorbikes, each with two people on board, coming in to a security post at the entrance to the city's police headquarters before at least one explosion.

The two motorbikes pull up alongside a car and four officers manning the checkpoint. At the moment of the explosion, two civilians appear to be walking into the checkpoint just metres from the motorbikes.

Three of the officers at the checkpoint are standing right by the motorbikes when the detonation happens.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo said the series of suicide attacks in Surabaya was the "act of cowards" and pledged to push through a new anti-terrorism bill to combat networks of Islamist militants in the country.

"This is the act of cowards, undignified and barbaric," Mr Widodo said on Metro TV.

He said he would issue a regulation in lieu of a law next month to force through a new anti-terrorism bill if Parliament failed to pass it.

Turnbull's sympathies for Indonesia, hits out at attackers

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull described the attacks as shocking and cowardly, and said he had written to Mr Widodo expressing Australia's heartfelt sympathy.

"The brutality, the barbarity, the inhumanity, the blasphemy of these terrorists strains our ability to believe it but it's there," Mr Turnbull said.

"These people are the worst of the worst.

"They are threatening civilised nations, they're threatening civilised ways of life. They're threatening people's harmony and religion. They are debasing and defaming Islam, as President Widodo has often said."

There was another attack on a different police station in the city last night, about 12 hours after 14 people — including six suicide bombers — were killed in three separate attacks on Surabaya churches.

The first church attack, at the Santa Maria Roman Catholic Church, killed four people, including one or more bombers, a police spokesman said.

Minutes after the first, there was a second explosion at the Christian Church of Diponegoro that killed two people.

Another two people died in a third attack at the city's Pantekosta Church, the police spokesman said.

Indonesia's chief security minister said police backed by the military would step up security across the country.

"The President has commanded that police, helped by TNI [the armed forces], to exert all power to secure the nation," Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Wiranto said.

ABC/wires

Topics: terrorism, unrest-conflict-and-war, indonesia

First posted </s> Citing CCTV footage from the scene, East Java Police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera said a man and a woman on the bike stopped at the security checkpoint.

“That’s where the explosion happened,” he added.

“Two people were riding (on the motorcycle) and a woman was sitting at the back.”

The authorities said the wounded included six civilians and four police.

Ambulances and the bomb squad descended on the chaotic scene with the CCTV images showed the mangled wreckage of a motorbike at the security gate at the headquarters in the heart of the city.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility after the latest suicide bombing.

“This is a cowardly act, undignified and inhumane,” Indonesian President Joko Widodo told reporters in Jakarta.

“There will be no compromise in taking action on the ground to stop terrorism.”

The lethal explosion comes just a day after a family of six including two young daughters staged suicide bombings at three churches in Surabaya during Sunday services.

At least 14 civilians have died as a result of that attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, and the toll could climb with more than 40 injured in hospital.

The archipelago nation of some 17,000 islands has long struggled with Islamic militancy, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people — mostly foreign tourists — in the country’s worst-ever terror attack.

Sunday’s church bombings were Indonesia’s deadliest attack in years. The attackers — a mother and father, two daughters aged nine and 12, and two sons aged 16 and 18 — were linked to local extremist network Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) which supports IS, police have said.

Authorities said they believed some of the family members had recently returned from Syria, where hundreds of Indonesians have flocked in recent years to fight alongside IS in its bid to carve out a caliphate ruled by strict Islamic law.

A further three people in another family were killed and two wounded when another bomb exploded at an apartment complex about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from Surabaya, just hours later, police said.

The mother and one child died from the explosion while police said they shot dead the father who was carrying a bomb detonator.

Two other children were injured in the blast and were taken to a hospital.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the apartment bomb.

In the church attacks, the mother, identified as Puji Kuswati, and her two daughters were wearing niqab face veils and had bombs strapped to their waists as they entered the grounds of the Kristen Indonesia Diponegoro Church and blew themselves up, police have said.

The father, JAD cell leader Dita Priyanto, drove a bomb-laden car into the Surabaya Centre Pentecostal Church while his sons rode motorcycles into Santa Maria church, where they detonated explosives they were carrying, according to authorities.

JAD, led by jailed radical Aman Abdurrahman, has been linked to several deadly incidents, including a 2016 gun and suicide attack in the capital Jakarta that left four attackers and four civilians dead.

That was the first assault claimed by IS in Southeast Asia.

Police on Sunday said four suspected JAD members were killed in a shootout during raids linked to a deadly prison riot this week.

Five members of Indonesia’s elite anti-terrorism squad and a prisoner were killed in clashes that saw Islamist inmates take a guard hostage at a high-security jail on the outskirts of Jakarta. IS claimed responsibility.

Karnavian said Sunday’s church attacks may have been revenge for the arrest of some of JAD’s leaders and for the prison crisis which eventually saw the surrender of the radical inmates. </s> JAKARTA - Indonesian police killed three terrorists and arrested another one on Wednesday (Dec 21) during a raid outside Jakarta, foiling a plan to stage a suicide attack on police officers guarding Christmas celebrations.

The terrorists had planned to stab a police officer first and when a crowd gathers, they will carry out a suicide bombing, Jakarta police chief Inspector General M. Iriawan told reporters.

"We have seized evidence. Several bombs, including a pipe bomb, fire arms, backpacks with live bombs inside," he added.

Police spokesman Brigadier General Rikwanto said: "We have yet to find out the role of each of them, including who could have been the suicide bomber."

He said the men were linked to a terror cell in Solo, Central Java, whose plan to attack the presidential palace in Jakarta was foiled earlier this month.

The police conducted the raid at a rented house in a residential area called Puri Serpong 2 in South Tangerang, Banten province.

The terrorists were identified only as Omen, Helmi and Irwan. The man arrested was Adam.

Another police spokesman Awi Setiyono said two of the terrorists are members of Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, but he did not identify the two.

"The three killed terrorists resisted arrest during the raid by throwing a bomb and firing shots at police. The bomb didn't go off. Police also found a bigger bomb in the house," BG Rikwanto told Metro TV.

He also said the Detachment 88 anti-terror squad was stepping up raids ahead of year end festivities. Like in previous years, the police had deployed additional officers at strategic locations, usually near churches.

The anti-terror unit had earlier arrested at least 14 members of the Solo cell, which police said was set up by Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian militant who is in the Middle East fighting alongside the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militant group.

Among the members of the group arrested so far are three women, including Dian Yulia Novi, who had worked as a maid in Singapore and Taiwan. Dian, 27, had hidden a homemade “rice-cooker” bomb in her rented room where she was arrested in Bekasi, West Java. </s> Officers stand guard at police headquarters following a suicide attack in Surabaya, Indonesia. Picture: Antara Foto/Didik Suhartono via Reuters

Surabaya, Indonesia - A family of Islamist militants in Indonesia carried an eight-year-old into a suicide bomb attack against police in Surabaya on Monday, a day after another militant family killed 13 people in suicide attacks on three churches in the same city.

The suicide bombers rode two motorbikes up to a checkpoint outside a police station and blew themselves up, Tito Karnavian, the police chief in Indonesia's second-largest city, told a news conference.

He said the child survived the explosion, and CCTV footage showed a child stumbling around in the aftermath.

Four officers and six civilians were wounded in the attack, East Java police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera said.

President Joko Widodo branded the attacks in Surabaya the "act of cowards", and pledged to push through a new anti-terrorism bill to combat Islamist militant networks.

After some major successes tackling Islamist militancy since 2001, there has been a resurgence in recent years, including in January 2016 when four suicide bombers and gunmen attacked a shopping area in central Jakarta. Police suspected Sunday's attacks on the churches were carried out by a cell of the Islamic State-inspired group Jemaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), an umbrella organization on a U.S. State Department terrorist list that is reckoned to have drawn hundreds of Indonesian sympathizers of Islamic State.

"In the case of Surabaya, they escaped detection, but once it happened we moved fast to identify their network," Karnavian said.

The father of the family involved in those attacks was the head of a JAD cell in the city, the police chief said.

Earlier, police said his family was among 500 Islamic State sympathizers who had returned from Syria, but the police chief said that was incorrect.

During the hunt for the cell, police fatally shot one suspect and arrested four others.

The police chief said the JAD cell may have been answering a call from Islamic State in Syria to "cells throughout the world to mobilize."

He said the imprisonment of JAD's leader, Aman Abdurrahman, could be another motive, and cited clashes with Islamist prisoners at a jail near Jakarta last week in which five counter-terrorism officers were killed.

In another incident in Sidoarjo, south of Surabaya, Karnavian said police recovered unexploded pipe bombs at an apartment where an explosion killed three members of a family alleged to have been making bombs. Three children from the family survived and were taken to the hospital.

In all, 25 people have died since Sunday in attacks, including 13 suspected militants, Karnavian said.

CCTV footage of the blast outside the police station on Monday morning showed two motorbikes arriving at a checkpoint next to a car followed by an explosion as officers approached.

Security experts said it was the first time in Indonesia that a child had been used by militants on a suicide mission.

"The objective of using a family for terror acts is so it is not easily detected by the police," said Indonesian terrorism analyst Stanislaus Riyanta.

He said that families could also avoid communicating using technology that could be tracked.

Indonesia's chief security minister said on Monday that police backed by the military would step up security across Indonesia.

President Widodo said he would issue a regulation in lieu of a new anti-terror law next month if parliament failed to pass the bill. Police have complained that current laws do not allow them to detain suspects to prevent attacks. </s> SURABAYA, Indonesia (Reuters) - A family of six launched suicide attacks on Christians attending Sunday services at three churches in Indonesia’s second-largest city of Surabaya, killing at least 13 people and wounding 40, officials said.

Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, has seen a recent resurgence in homegrown militancy and police said the family who carried out Sunday’s attacks were among 500 Islamic sympathizers who had returned from Syria.

“The husband drove the car, an Avanza, that contained explosives and rammed it into the gate in front of that church,” East Java police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera told reporters at the regional police headquarters in Surabaya.

The wife and two daughters were involved in an attack on a second church and at the third church “two other children rode the motorbike and had the bomb across their laps”, Mangera said.

The two daughters were aged 12 and 9 while the other two, thought to be the man’s sons, were 18 and 16, police said.

They blamed the bombings on the Islamic State-inspired group Jemaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD).

JAD is an umbrella organization on a U.S. State Department “terrorist” list that is estimated to have drawn hundreds of Islamic State sympathizers in Indonesia.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks, in a message carried on its Amaq news agency.

“This act is barbaric and beyond the limits of humanity, causing victims among members of society, the police and even innocent children,” President Joko Widodo said during a visit to the scene of the attacks.

East Java police spokesman Mangera said the attacks had killed at least 13 people and 40 had been taken to hospital, including two police officers. He called on people to remain calm.

Streets around the bombed churches were blocked by checkpoints and heavily armed police stood guard as forensic and bomb squad officers combined the area for clues.

Television footage showed one church where the yard in front appeared engulfed in fire, with thick, black smoke billowing up. A large blast was heard hours after the attacks, which Mangera said was a bomb disposal squad dealing with a device.

The attacks come days after militant Islamist prisoners killed five members of an elite counter-terrorism force during a 36-hour standoff at a high security jail on the outskirts of the capital, Jakarta.

The church attacks were likely linked to the prison hostage standoff, said Wawan Purwanto, communication director at Indonesia’s intelligence agency.

“The main target is still security authorities, but we can say that there are alternative (targets) if the main targets are blocked,” he said.

At St Mary’s catholic church, the first place of worship to be attacked, the bombing happened after an earlier mass was over and when the church was getting ready to hold another service.

A witness interviewed by CNN Indonesia said shortly before the explosion he saw a person on a motorbike drive in carrying a cardboard box.

Separately, an internal police report reviewed by Reuters said a suspected bomb exploded in a car in the parking lot of a Pentacostal church, setting alight dozens of motorbikes.

In the third location, the Indonesian Christian Church, veiled women entered the church’s yard where they were stopped by a security guard before an explosion occurred at the same spot, according to the police report.

Television images showed toppled and burnt motorcycles and debris scattered around the entrance of one church and police cordoning off areas as crowds gathered.

A spokesman for Indonesia’s church association (PGI) called on the government for more help on security at churches.

“PGI is concerned because this had happened many times and often taken place around the time of Sunday services,” said Jeirry Sumampow, a spokesman for the Indonesia’s Communion of Churches.

Pope Francis offered his prayer to the victims during his Sunday prayer in Rome.

“I am particularly close to the dear people of Indonesia, especially to the communities of Christians of the city of Surabaya, which were hit hard by the serious attack on places of worship,” he said.

“Together we invoke the God of peace (asking him) to cease these violent actions and (to make sure) that in the heart of all there could be a space not feelings of hatred and violence, but of reconciliation and fraternity.”

Nearly 90 percent of Indonesians are Muslim, but the country is also home to sizeable communities of Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, and people who adhere to traditional beliefs.

Indonesia has had some major successes tackling militancy inspired by al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States in 2001. But there has been a resurgence of Islamist activity in recent years, some of it linked to the rise of Islamic State.

The most serious incident was in January 2016 when four suicide bombers and gunmen attacked a shopping area in central Jakarta.

Churches have also been targeted previously, including near-simultaneous attacks on churches there at Christmas in 2000 that killed about 20 people. </s> SURABAYA: A family of six, including two young girls, were responsible for Islamic State-claimed suicide attacks that killed at least 11 and injured dozens during Sunday church services in Indonesia, national police chief Tito Karnavian said.

The family - a mother and father, two daughters aged 9 and 12, and two sons aged 16 and 18 - were linked to local extremist network Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, which supports the Islamic State, Karnavian said.

"The husband drove the car, an Avanza, that contained explosives and rammed it into the gate in front of that church," East Java police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera told reporters at the regional police headquarters in Surabaya.

The wife and two daughters were involved in an attack on a second church and at the third church "two other children rode the motorbike and had the bomb across their laps", Mangera said.

Indonesian president Joko Widodo slammed the attacks, telling reporters: "We must unite against terrorism."

"The state will not tolerate this act of cowardice," he added.

The deadly blasts all occurred within 10 minutes of each other, police said, with the first explosion at 7.30 am (0030 GMT).



Police ordered the temporary closure of all churches in Surabaya, and a large food festival in the city was cancelled.

The bombings come days after Islamist militant prisoners killed five members of an elite counter-terrorism force during a 36-hour standoff at a high security jail on the outskirts of the capital, Jakarta.

Islamic State later claimed responsibility for the attacks, the militant group's Amaq news agency said, without providing any evidence.

"Three martyrdom attacks inflicts at least 11 deaths and 41 injuries of the churches' guards and Christians in the city of Surabaya in East Java province in Indonesia," the agency said in a statement that gave no further details. </s> SURABAYA >> Coordinated suicide bombings carried out by members of the same family struck three churches in Indonesia’s second-largest city Sunday, police said, as the world’s most populous Muslim nation recoiled in horror at one of its worst attacks since the 2002 Bali bombings.

At least seven people died at the churches in Surabaya along with the six family members, the youngest of whom were girls aged 9 and 12, according to police. Another 41 people were injured.

National police chief Tito Karnavian said that the father detonated a car bomb, two sons aged 18 and 16 used a motorcycle for their attack, and the mother and her two daughters wore explosives.

Karnavian said the family had returned to Indonesia from Syria, where until recently the Islamic State group controlled significant territory.

IS claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement carried by its Aamaq news agency. It didn’t mention anything about families or children taking part and said there were only three attackers.

Indonesia’s deadliest terrorist attack occurred in 2002, when bombs exploded on the tourist island of Bali, killing 202 people in one night, mostly foreigners. But the fact that children were involved in Sunday’s attacks in Surabaya shocked and angered the country.

Jemaah Islamiyah, the network responsible for the Bali attacks, was obliterated by a sustained crackdown on militants by Indonesia’s counterterrorism police with U.S. and Australian support. A new threat has emerged in recent years, inspired by IS attacks abroad.

Experts on militant networks have warned for several years that the estimated 1,100 Indonesians who traveled to Syria to join IS posed a threat if they returned home.

Karnavian identified the father as Dita Futrianto and said he was head of the Surabaya cell of Jemaah Anshorut Daulah, an Indonesian militant network affiliated with IS that has been implicated in attacks in Indonesia in the past year. He identified the mother as Puji Kuswati.

The attacks occurred within minutes of each other, according to Surabaya police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera.

Karnavian said Futrianto drove a bomb-laden car into the city’s Pentecostal church.

Kuswati, with her two daughters, attacked the Christian Church of Diponegoro, he said. Based on their remains, Karnavian said the mother and daughters were all wearing explosives around their waists.

The sons rode a motorcycle onto the grounds of the Santa Maria Church and detonated their explosives there.

A witness said the woman arrived at the Diponegoro church carrying two bags.

“At first officers blocked them in front of the churchyard, but the woman ignored them and forced her way inside. Suddenly, she hugged a civilian, then (the bomb) exploded,” said the witness, a security guard who identified himself as Antonius.

At Santa Maria, a Catholic church, shattered glass and chunks of concrete littered the entrance, which was sealed off by armed police. Rescuers treated victims in a nearby field while officers inspected wrecked and burned motorcycles in the parking lot.

A street merchant outside the church said she was thrown several meters (yards) by the blast.

“I saw two men riding a motorbike force their way into the churchyard. One was wearing black pants and one with a backpack,” said the merchant, Samsia, who uses a single name. “Soon after that, the explosion happened.”

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo visited the sites and described the attacks as “cowardly actions” that were “very barbaric and beyond the limit of humanity.”

In Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, the Indonesian Church Association added its condemnation.

“We are angry,” said Gormar Gultom, an official with the association, but he urged people to let the police investigation take its course.

Indonesia’s two largest Muslim organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, also condemned the attacks.

Mangera, the Surabaya police spokesman, said police responded about 9 p.m. to an explosion in a residential building in Sidoarjo, a district bordering Surabaya.

He confirmed TV reports that three people, including a child, were inside the fifth-floor flat at the time of the blast. A bomb squad was checking the building, he said, and hundreds of people were evacuated from the neighborhood.

Separately, national police spokesman Setyo Wasisto said police fatally shot four suspected militants and arrested two others early Sunday in West Java towns. It wasn’t clear whether the shootings were connected to the church attacks.

“They have trained in order to attack police,” Wasisto said, identifying the militants as members of Jemaah Anshorut Daulah.

Jakarta police placed the capital and surrounding areas on high alert, while the transportation ministry warned airports to be on guard.

The church attacks came days after police ended a hostage-taking by imprisoned Islamic militants at a detention center near Jakarta in which six officers and three inmates died. IS claimed responsibility.

Despite Indonesia’s crackdown on militants since the Bali bombings, the country has faced a new threat in recent years as the rise of IS in the Middle East invigorated local networks.

Christians, many of whom are from the ethnic Chinese minority, make up about 9 percent of Indonesia’s 260 million people.

Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini and Ali Kotarumalos in Jakarta, Indonesia and Stephen Wright in Bangkok contributed. </s> Armed Indonesian police secure a house after a firefight erupted as alleged militants had opened fire at officers in South Tangerang, 25 kilometres (15 miles) outside the capital Jakarta.

JAKARTA: Indonesian police killed three terrorists and arrested another yesterday during a raid outside Jakarta, foiling a plan to stage a suicide attack on police officers guarding Christmas celebrations.

The terrorists had planned to stab a police officer first and to carry out a suicide bombing when a crowd gathered, Jakarta police chief Inspector General M. Iriawan said.

"We have seized evidence. Several bombs, including a pipe bomb, fire arms, backpacks with live bombs inside," he said.

Police spokesman Brigadier General Rikwanto said: "We have yet to find out the role of each of them, including who could have been the suicide bomber."

He said the men were linked to a terror cell in Solo, Central Java, whose plan to attack the presidential palace in Jakarta was foiled earlier this month.

The police conducted the raid at a rented house in a residential area called Puri Serpong 2 in South Tangerang, Banten province.

The terrorists were identified only as Omen, Helmi and Irwan. The man arrested was Adam.

Another police spokesman Awi Setiyono said two of the terrorists are members of the Jamaah Ansharut Daulah network, an offshoot of the Jemaah Islamiyah group, but he did not identify the two.

"The three killed terrorists resisted arrest during the raid by throwing a bomb and firing shots at police. Police also found a bigger bomb in the house," BG Rikwanto told Metro TV.

He also said the Detachment 88 anti-terror squad was stepping up raids ahead of year-end festivities.

Like in previous years, the police had deployed additional officers at strategic locations, usually near churches.

The anti-terror unit had earlier arrested at least 10 members of the Solo cell, which police said was set up by Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian militant who is in the Middle East fighting alongside the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militant group.

Among the members of the group arrested were three women, including Dian Yulia Novi, who had worked as a maid in Singapore and Taiwan. Dian, 27, had hidden a homemade "rice-cooker" bomb in her rented room, where she was arrested in Bekasi, West Java.

Police said investigations are continuing into the larger network and its agenda, AFP reported.

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, suffered many deadly homegrown attacks during the last decade - including the 2002 Bali bombings which killed over 200 people.

A sustained crackdown has weakened many of the extremist networks, but there have been fears of a resurgence in militancy. Police believe hundreds of Indonesians have travelled to Syria to fight with militant groups, including ISIS. </s> SURABAYA, Indonesia - An Indonesian family detonated explosives outside police headquarters in the country’s second-largest city on Monday, a day after members of another family launched coordinated suicide bombings on three city churches that killed at least eight people.

National police chief Tito Karnavian said a girl aged about eight who was with two of the attackers on a motorcycle survived being thrown by the blast at Surabaya’s police headquarters. The attack killed the four perpetrators. Six civilians and four officers were wounded.

The attack came just hours after police said the family that carried out the church bombings included girls aged nine and 12.

The flurry of attacks have raised concerns that previously beaten down militant networks in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation have been reinvigorated by the return of some of the estimated 1,100 Indonesians who went to fight with the Islamic State group in Syria. Experts have warned for several years that when those fighter return, they could pose a significant threat.

IS claimed responsibility for the church bombings in a statement carried by its Aamaq news agency. Karnavian, however, said earlier police comments that the family had spent time in Syria were incorrect.

He said the church bombers and the police headquarters attackers were friends, as were another family whose homemade bombs exploded in their apartment Sunday night.

The use of children in the attacks has been particularly horrifying to people. Indonesia’s president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo condemned them as “barbaric” and vowed that authorities would root out and “destroy” Islamic militant networks.

Security camera footage of the attack on Surabaya’s police headquarters showed at least one explosion after the four attackers rode two motorcycles up to a security checkpoint. The motorcycles, which moved closely together, pulled up alongside a car and four officers manning opposite sides of the checkpoint.

Two men, apparently civilians, were walking into the area just meters from the motorcycles at the moment of the explosion, which a split second later was followed by a second possible blast.

Indonesia’s deadliest terrorist attack occurred in 2002, when bombs exploded on the tourist island of Bali, killing 202 people in one night, mostly foreigners. Jemaah Islamiyah, the Al-Qaeda affiliated network responsible for the Bali attacks, was obliterated by a sustained crackdown on militants by Indonesia’s counterterrorism police with U.S. and Australian support.

Karnavian has said the father of the family that carried out the church bombings was head of the Surabaya cell of Jemaah Anshorut Daulah, an Indonesian militant network affiliated with IS that has been implicated in attacks in Indonesia in the past year. All six members of the family were killed.

The IS statement claiming the attacks didn’t mention anything about families or children taking part and said there were only three attackers. The group also claimed responsibility for a hostage-taking ordeal last week by imprisoned Islamic militants at a detention center near Jakarta in which six officers were killed.

Separately on Sunday, three members of another family were killed when homemade bombs exploded at an apartment in Sidoarjo, a town bordering Surabaya, police said.

The church attacks occurred within minutes of each other, according to Surabaya police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera.

Karnavian said the father drove a bomb-laden car into the city’s Pentecostal church. The mother, with her two daughters, attacked the Christian Church of Diponegoro, he said. Based on their remains, Karnavian said the mother and daughters were all wearing explosives around their waists.

The sons aged 16 and 18 rode a motorcycle onto the grounds of the Santa Maria Church and detonated their explosives there.

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An Indonesian family believed to be connected to the terrorist group Jamaah Ansharut Daulah attacks police headquarters in Surabaya. The attack kills all four perpetrators and injures the perpetrator's daughter, six civilians, and four police officers.