Dozens injured in explosion at high school mosque in Indonesia: NPR

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesian authorities said they have identified a 17-year-old boy as the suspected perpetrator of an attack that rocked a high school mosque during Friday prayers in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, injuring at least 55 people, mostly students.

Police have for now dismissed speculation that the blasts were a terror attack and said they were still investigating.

Witnesses told local television stations that they heard at least two loud bangs around noon, from inside and outside the mosque, just as the sermon had begun at the mosque at SMA 72, a public high school on a naval complex in Jakarta’s northern Kelapa Gading neighborhood.

Students and others rushed outside in panic as gray smoke filled the mosque.

“The information I have is that the suspect is undergoing surgery,” Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives Sufmi Dasco Ahmad told reporters after visiting student victims at a hospital. “The suspect is a 17-year-old male student,” he said, without providing further details.

National police chief Listyo Sigit confirmed at a news conference at the presidential palace in Jakarta that the suspect was one of two students who underwent surgery for serious injuries in the blasts.

“We have identified the suspected perpetrator,” Sigit said after attending an event with President Prabowo Subianto at the palace. “Our personnel are currently conducting an in-depth investigation to determine the identity of the suspect and the area in which he resides, including his home and others.”

Sigit said police investigators are still gathering all the information to determine the motive, including how the suspect was able to put together a toy submachine gun with words written on it, including “14 words.” For Agartha’ and ‘Brenton Tarrant: Welcome to Hell.’

“14 words” is generally a reference to a white supremacist slogan, while Brenton Tarrant is the perpetrator of a 2019 mass shooting at a mosque and Islamic center in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed 51 people and injured dozens of others.

“We discovered that the weapon was a toy gun with specific markings, which we are also investigating to understand the motive, including how he put it together and carried out the attack,” Sigit said, adding that the male teenage suspect was a student of the school.

Most victims suffered injuries from broken glass and burns. The cause of the explosions was not immediately known, but Jakarta police chief Asep Edi Suheri said they came from near the mosque’s loudspeaker.

He said the injured were rushed to nearby hospitals and 20 students remained hospitalized for burns, including three with serious injuries.

“Police are still conducting on-site investigations to determine the cause,” he said, urging speculation that the incident was an attack before the police investigation is completed.

Videos circulating on social media showed dozens of students in school uniforms running in panic across the school’s basketball court, some covering their ears with their hands, apparently to protect themselves from the loud bangs.

Some of the injured were carried on stretchers to waiting cars.

Shocked relatives of the students gathered at centers in Yarsi and Cempaka Putih hospitals to seek information about their loved ones. Parents told television stations that their children had wounds from being hit in the head, feet and hands by sharp nails and pieces of exploding objects.

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, was hit by a major militant attack in 2002 when al-Qaeda carried out bomb attacks on the resort island of Bali, killing 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.

In subsequent years, there have been mostly smaller, less deadly attacks against the government, police and anti-terrorist forces, as well as attacks seen by militant groups as infidels.

Friday’s attack was not the first attack on a mosque. In 2011, an Islamic militant blew himself up during Friday prayers in a mosque at a police complex in Cirebon, packed with police officers, injuring 30 people.

In December 2022, an Islamic militant and convicted bomb maker, who had been released from prison the year before, blew himself up at a police station in West Java, killing one officer and injuring 11 people.

Since 2023, the Southeast Asian country has experienced what authorities call a “zero-attack phenomenon,” which the government credits for the stable security situation.