1 dead, 3 injured in sword attack on Indonesian police headquarters
(CNN)Four attackers armed with samurai swords targeted a police station in western Indonesia on Wednesday morning, killing at least one officer, police said.
The individuals crashed a vehicle into the entrance of the Riau province police headquarters in Pekanbaru, on the island of Sumatra, and began attacking officers, national police spokesman Setyo Wasisto said. Police shot and killed the four suspected terrorists, he added.
The attackers were members of a terror group called the Indonesian Islamic State, which is affiliated with ISIS, Wasisto said.
The driver of the van then attempted to the flee the scene, hitting and killing one police officer, he added. Two police officers and one local journalist were also injured in the attack.
Wasisto said the driver was apprehended and was being detained at Riau Police Precinct. Police found the van not far from the location of the attack and searched it for possible explosive materials.
The attack is the latest in a series of attacks in the country. On Sunday, a radicalized family carried out three suicide bombings on Christian churches in the East Java city of Surabaya, claiming 10 lives and injuring more than 40 other people.
Later that day, an explosion killed a mother and her teenage daughter in a housing complex in a suburb of the city before the father of the family, spotted by police holding a detonator, was shot and killed.
The Sunday attacks were followed by another suicide bombing involving a family, this time on a Surabaya police station Monday morning.
Four members of that family were killed in that attack, which wounded 10 people. All three incidents involved the children of the three families, who knew each other and studied the Quran together, police said Tuesday.
Indonesia National Police Chief Tito Karnavian told reporters Monday that officers were working on the assumption that the attacks followed a directive from ISIS central command to avenge the imprisonment of former leaders of Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, an Indonesian jihadi group that supports ISIS.
- Source : Euan Mckirdy
