Explosions rock Indonesia’s school mosque during Friday prayers, injure 55

Jakarta: Multiple explosions shook a mosque at a high school during Friday prayers in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, injuring at least 55 people, mostly students, police said.

Witnesses told local television stations that they heard at least two loud blasts around midday, just as the sermon had started at the mosque at SMA 27, a state high school within a navy compound in Jakarta’s northern Kelapa Gading neighbourhood. Students and others ran out in panic as gray smoke filled the mosque.

Most of the victims suffered minor to severe injuries from glass shards. The cause of the blasts was not immediately known but they came from near the mosque’s loudspeaker, according to Jakarta Police Chief Asep Edi Suheri.

People were rushed to nearby hospitals. Some were soon sent home but 20 students remain in hospital care, three of them with serious injuries, the police chief said.

Suheri said an anti-bomb squad that was deployed at the scene found toy rifles and a toy gun near the mosque.

“Police are still investigating the scene to determine the cause of the blasts,” Suheri said, and urged against speculation that the incident was an attack before police investigation is completed.

“Let the authorities work first,” Suheri said. “We will convey whatever the results are to the public.”

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, was struck by a major militant attack in 2002 when al-Qaida staged bombings on the resort island of Bali that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.

In subsequent years, there have been mostly smaller, less deadly strikes that have targeted foreigners, the government, police and anti-terrorism forces, as well as those considered infidels by militant groups.

In December 2022, a Muslim militant and convicted bomb-maker who was released from prison the previous year, blew himself up at a police station in West Java, killing an officer and wounding 11 people.

Since 2023, the Southeast Asia nation has experienced what authorities here call a “zero attack phenomenon,” crediting the government with the stable security situation.