Indonesia: Sword-wielding men attack Sumatra police station
One officer killed, two wounded after group of men stage attack, claimed by ISIL, on police station in Sumatra island.
Four men armed with samurai swords and firearms have attacked a police station in the Indonesian island of Sumatra, killing one officer and wounding two others before being shot dead by security forces.
The attackers targeted officers after ramming a minivan into a gate at the police headquarters in Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau province, local media said on Wednesday.
A fifth man, who drove the vehicle, was arrested while attempting to escape.
“When the car broke through into the Riau police headquarters, it was blocked by policemen,” national police spokesman Seyto Wasisto told a televised news conference.
“Then four of the men got out from the car and attacked police,” he added.
Local journalist Doddy Vladimir, who was at the scene of the attack, said he saw a white Toyota Avanza van hit the headquarter’s fence at around 9am local time (02:00 GMT).
“It was really quick. People wearing masks alighted from a van and stabbed a police officer nearby,” Vladimir said, as quoted by tribunnews.com.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack, the group’s Amaq website said.
Wave of bombings
Indonesia is on high alert after a wave of recent bombings in the country’s second-largest city, Surabaya.
On Monday, a suicide bomb attack outside a police building, carried out by one family and claimed by ISIL, killed at least 10 people.
|
|
The bombing followed separate attacks on three churches, also carried out by one family, in the same city. At least 13 people were killed.
Police suspected Sunday’s attacks on the churches were carried out by a cell of the ISIL-inspired group Jemaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD).
Just hours after the church bombings, a further three people in another family were killed and two wounded when another bomb exploded at an apartment complex about 30km from Surabaya.
That blast appeared to have been an accidental detonation that killed a mother and her 17-year-old child who was not identified, police said.
Police in Indonesia have raided several houses and killed several people in a nationwide hunt for more possible bombers.