President orders thorough probe of Indonesia suicide attacks

Indonesia’s president ordered a thorough investigation Thursday of twin suicide bombings that targeted police, killing three officers, in the deadliest attack by suspected militants in the capital in a year. (Photo: Presiden Joko Widodo/Facebook)

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia’s president ordered a thorough investigation Thursday of twin suicide bombings that targeted police, killing three officers, in the deadliest attack by suspected militants in the capital in a year.

The bombings on Wednesday night also injured five other police officers and five civilians.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said he ordered police to “thoroughly investigate the networks of the perpetrators and hunt them to the roots.” He spoke from his hometown of Solo in Central Java province.

Muslim-majority Indonesia has carried out a sustained crackdown on militants since the 2002 Bali bombings by al-Qaida-affiliated radicals that killed 202 people. A new threat has emerged in the past several years from Islamic State group sympathizers.

In January last year, a suicide bombing and gun attack in central Jakarta killed four civilians and four assailants.

Last month, police said they arrested three suspected militants who were allegedly planning to attack a police station in East Java. In March, police shot a suspected militant and wounded another as they tried to escape and identified them as members of Jemaah Anshorut Daulah, a network of almost two dozen Indonesian extremist groups that formed in 2015 and pledges allegiance to Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

It has been linked to numerous plots in Indonesia, including the January 2016 Jakarta attack.

Vice National Police Chief Syafruddin, who uses one name, said an initial investigation showed there were two explosions by two suicide bombers near a bus terminal, where police was providing security for a parade.

Police said an anti-terror squad immediately raided two houses believed to be owned by the perpetrators in neighbouring provinces of Banten and West Java, but the results have not yet been made public.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told his Parliament on Thursday that he had phoned Jokowi to “offer our condolences and our resolute support to Indonesia as we condemn the murderous terrorist attack on civilians and police in Jakarta last night.”

“While we mourn, we must learn from these events as we do and sharpen our resolve to defeat the terrorists abroad and at home,” said Turnbull, referring also to the suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena in Britain that killed 22 this week.

Australia’s opposition leader Bill Shorten condemned the Jakarta attacks as “absolutely despicable.” He told Parliament the suicide bombings only days before the holy month of Ramadan showed that “terrorists have no respect for faith or creed or the background of any of their victims.”

Australia and Indonesia plan to jointly host an Asia-Pacific summit in August aimed at co-ordinating against the security threat posed by homegrown Islamic militants returning from battlefields in Syria and Iraq.