Officers stand guard at police headquarters following a suicide attack in Surabaya, Indonesia. Picture: Antara Foto/Didik Suhartono via Reuters

Surabaya, Indonesia - A family of Islamist militants in Indonesia carried an eight-year-old into a suicide bomb attack against police in Surabaya on Monday, a day after another militant family killed 13 people in suicide attacks on three churches in the same city.

The suicide bombers rode two motorbikes up to a checkpoint outside a police station and blew themselves up, Tito Karnavian, the police chief in Indonesia's second-largest city, told a news conference.

He said the child survived the explosion, and CCTV footage showed a child stumbling around in the aftermath.

Four officers and six civilians were wounded in the attack, East Java police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera said.

President Joko Widodo branded the attacks in Surabaya the "act of cowards", and pledged to push through a new anti-terrorism bill to combat Islamist militant networks.

After some major successes tackling Islamist militancy since 2001, there has been a resurgence in recent years, including in January 2016 when four suicide bombers and gunmen attacked a shopping area in central Jakarta. Police suspected Sunday's attacks on the churches were carried out by a cell of the Islamic State-inspired group Jemaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), an umbrella organization on a U.S. State Department terrorist list that is reckoned to have drawn hundreds of Indonesian sympathizers of Islamic State.

"In the case of Surabaya, they escaped detection, but once it happened we moved fast to identify their network," Karnavian said.

The father of the family involved in those attacks was the head of a JAD cell in the city, the police chief said.

Earlier, police said his family was among 500 Islamic State sympathizers who had returned from Syria, but the police chief said that was incorrect.

During the hunt for the cell, police fatally shot one suspect and arrested four others.

The police chief said the JAD cell may have been answering a call from Islamic State in Syria to "cells throughout the world to mobilize."

He said the imprisonment of JAD's leader, Aman Abdurrahman, could be another motive, and cited clashes with Islamist prisoners at a jail near Jakarta last week in which five counter-terrorism officers were killed.

In another incident in Sidoarjo, south of Surabaya, Karnavian said police recovered unexploded pipe bombs at an apartment where an explosion killed three members of a family alleged to have been making bombs. Three children from the family survived and were taken to the hospital.

In all, 25 people have died since Sunday in attacks, including 13 suspected militants, Karnavian said.

CCTV footage of the blast outside the police station on Monday morning showed two motorbikes arriving at a checkpoint next to a car followed by an explosion as officers approached.

Security experts said it was the first time in Indonesia that a child had been used by militants on a suicide mission.

"The objective of using a family for terror acts is so it is not easily detected by the police," said Indonesian terrorism analyst Stanislaus Riyanta.

He said that families could also avoid communicating using technology that could be tracked.

Indonesia's chief security minister said on Monday that police backed by the military would step up security across Indonesia.

President Widodo said he would issue a regulation in lieu of a new anti-terror law next month if parliament failed to pass the bill. Police have complained that current laws do not allow them to detain suspects to prevent attacks.</s>A bomb attack has been reported at Surabaya Police headquarters on Monday morning, just a few hours after a bomb prematurely went off in Sidoarjo, East Java, late on Sunday and bomb attacks on three churches in the city earlier in the day.

East Java Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Frans Barung Mangera confirmed the attack on the police headquarters.

The attack took place at the entrance of the headquarters on Jl. Sikatan at 8:50 a.m.

Frans said four police officers and six civilians were injured in the attack.

However, he did not disclose the number of fatalities in the attack, which appears to be a suicide bombing.

CCTV video footage circulating of the attack shows that the source of the explosion came from a motorcycle. Eyewitnesses said a man rode the motorcycle along with a woman and child sitting on the passenger seat.

Meanwhile, East Java Police have found a connection between the church bombings and Sidoarjo bombing.

"Similar types of explosives were used," Frans said.

Both the Surabaya church bombings and Sidoarjo bomb explosion also involved family members, Frans said.</s>THE police headquarters in Indonesia’s second largest city was attacked Monday by suspected militants who detonated explosives from a motorcycle, a day after suicide bombings at three churches in the city by members of one family killed at least eight people.

CCTV footage shows a car and two motorcycles approaching a security checkpoint at the police complex followed by an explosion from one of the motorbikes with at least two people aboard it.

Surabaya police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera said civilians and police were victims of the attack but didn’t immediately announce a death or injury toll.

Police say the family that carried out Sunday’s suicide bombings had returned to Indonesia from Syria and included girls aged 9 and 12. All six members of the family died.

Separately on Sunday, three members of another family were killed when homemade bombs exploded at an apartment in Sidoarjo, a town bordering Surabaya, police say.

IS claimed responsibility for the church attacks in a statement carried by its Aamaq news agency. It didn’t mention anything about families or children taking part and said there were only three attackers.

Indonesia’s deadliest terrorist attack occurred in 2002, when bombs exploded on the tourist island of Bali, killing 202 people in one night, mostly foreigners. But the fact that children were involved in Sunday’s attacks in Surabaya shocked and angered the country.

Jemaah Islamiyah, the network responsible for the Bali attacks, was obliterated by a sustained crackdown on militants by Indonesia’s counterterrorism police with U.S. and Australian support. A new threat has emerged in recent years, inspired by IS attacks abroad.

Experts on militant networks have warned for several years that the estimated 1,100 Indonesians who traveled to Syria to join IS posed a threat if they returned home.</s>Indonesian official: Explosion at Surabaya police headquarters after apparent vehicle attack

SURABAYA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian official: Explosion at Surabaya police headquarters after apparent vehicle attack.</s>Indonesian official: Explosion at Surabaya police headquarters after apparent vehicle attack

SURABAYA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian official: Explosion at Surabaya police headquarters after apparent vehicle attack.</s>SURABAYA: A family of six, including two young girls, were responsible for Islamic State-claimed suicide attacks that killed at least 11 and injured dozens during Sunday church services in Indonesia, national police chief Tito Karnavian said.

The family - a mother and father, two daughters aged 9 and 12, and two sons aged 16 and 18 - were linked to local extremist network Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, which supports the Islamic State, Karnavian said.

"The husband drove the car, an Avanza, that contained explosives and rammed it into the gate in front of that church," East Java police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera told reporters at the regional police headquarters in Surabaya.

The wife and two daughters were involved in an attack on a second church and at the third church "two other children rode the motorbike and had the bomb across their laps", Mangera said.

Indonesian president Joko Widodo slammed the attacks, telling reporters: "We must unite against terrorism."

"The state will not tolerate this act of cowardice," he added.

The deadly blasts all occurred within 10 minutes of each other, police said, with the first explosion at 7.30 am (0030 GMT).



Police ordered the temporary closure of all churches in Surabaya, and a large food festival in the city was cancelled.

The bombings come days after Islamist militant prisoners killed five members of an elite counter-terrorism force during a 36-hour standoff at a high security jail on the outskirts of the capital, Jakarta.

Islamic State later claimed responsibility for the attacks, the militant group's Amaq news agency said, without providing any evidence.

"Three martyrdom attacks inflicts at least 11 deaths and 41 injuries of the churches' guards and Christians in the city of Surabaya in East Java province in Indonesia," the agency said in a statement that gave no further details.</s>Citing CCTV footage from the scene, East Java Police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera said a man and a woman on the bike stopped at the security checkpoint.

“That’s where the explosion happened,” he added.

“Two people were riding (on the motorcycle) and a woman was sitting at the back.”

The authorities said the wounded included six civilians and four police.

Ambulances and the bomb squad descended on the chaotic scene with the CCTV images showed the mangled wreckage of a motorbike at the security gate at the headquarters in the heart of the city.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility after the latest suicide bombing.

“This is a cowardly act, undignified and inhumane,” Indonesian President Joko Widodo told reporters in Jakarta.

“There will be no compromise in taking action on the ground to stop terrorism.”

The lethal explosion comes just a day after a family of six including two young daughters staged suicide bombings at three churches in Surabaya during Sunday services.

At least 14 civilians have died as a result of that attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, and the toll could climb with more than 40 injured in hospital.

The archipelago nation of some 17,000 islands has long struggled with Islamic militancy, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people — mostly foreign tourists — in the country’s worst-ever terror attack.

Sunday’s church bombings were Indonesia’s deadliest attack in years. The attackers — a mother and father, two daughters aged nine and 12, and two sons aged 16 and 18 — were linked to local extremist network Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) which supports IS, police have said.

Authorities said they believed some of the family members had recently returned from Syria, where hundreds of Indonesians have flocked in recent years to fight alongside IS in its bid to carve out a caliphate ruled by strict Islamic law.

A further three people in another family were killed and two wounded when another bomb exploded at an apartment complex about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from Surabaya, just hours later, police said.

The mother and one child died from the explosion while police said they shot dead the father who was carrying a bomb detonator.

Two other children were injured in the blast and were taken to a hospital.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the apartment bomb.

In the church attacks, the mother, identified as Puji Kuswati, and her two daughters were wearing niqab face veils and had bombs strapped to their waists as they entered the grounds of the Kristen Indonesia Diponegoro Church and blew themselves up, police have said.

The father, JAD cell leader Dita Priyanto, drove a bomb-laden car into the Surabaya Centre Pentecostal Church while his sons rode motorcycles into Santa Maria church, where they detonated explosives they were carrying, according to authorities.

JAD, led by jailed radical Aman Abdurrahman, has been linked to several deadly incidents, including a 2016 gun and suicide attack in the capital Jakarta that left four attackers and four civilians dead.

That was the first assault claimed by IS in Southeast Asia.

Police on Sunday said four suspected JAD members were killed in a shootout during raids linked to a deadly prison riot this week.

Five members of Indonesia’s elite anti-terrorism squad and a prisoner were killed in clashes that saw Islamist inmates take a guard hostage at a high-security jail on the outskirts of Jakarta. IS claimed responsibility.

Karnavian said Sunday’s church attacks may have been revenge for the arrest of some of JAD’s leaders and for the prison crisis which eventually saw the surrender of the radical inmates.</s>At least one person died and several officers were injured in the attack, which came a day after bombs went off in churches across the city, killing at least 13 people. Officials said details of the victims were still unclear, and no-one has claimed responsibility. Some reports said civilians had also been caught in the blasts.

Latest police reports indicate that the attack involved an entire family, including an eight-year-old child. They drew up at a checkpoint at police HQ on two mopeds before detonating their devices. The child survived the attack with only minor injuries.

On Sunday three churches were targeted, say police, who are blaming the members of a single radicalised family that allegedly went to Syria.

Indonesia's Chief Security minister says the army and police will be stepping up security , and Indonesia's president said the attacks were acts of "cowards", and he would force a new anti-terror law through parliament if necessary.</s>Surabaya blast at police headquarters carried out by family riding two motorbikes

Updated

Sorry, this video has expired Video: CCTV vision shows the moment the bomb goes off (ABC News)

The two families behind recent suicide bombing attacks in Indonesia's second-largest city were friends, police have said.

Key points: At least one vehicle bomb explodes outside Surabaya police headquarters, 10 injured

Extremists linked to Jemaah Ansurat Daulah group suspected to be responsible

Follows another attack on a different police station in the city last night

An Indonesian family brought its eight-year-old daughter to a suicide bomb attack it launched on the police headquarters in Surabaya, authorities said, a day after members of another family conducted coordinated suicide bombings on three city churches that killed 12 people.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack outside the police building, the Islamist militant group's Amaq news agency said, without providing evidence.

National police chief Tito Karnavian said the girl, who was with two of the attackers on a motorcycle, survived being thrown by the blast at Surabaya's police headquarters. The attack killed the four perpetrators. Six civilians and four officers were wounded.

The attack came just hours after police said the family that carried out the church bombings included girls aged nine and 12.

He said the church bombers and the police headquarters attackers were friends, as were another family whose homemade bombs exploded in their apartment Sunday night.

Police suspect the new attacks are also by extremists linked to the Jemaah Ansurat Daulah group.

Director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, Sidney Jones, says it has been a long time since any one group has shown the capacity to carry out such a series of attacks.

"This does seem to be part of a coordinated series of actions, and that would also be the first time we had such coordinated activities since the Christmas eve bombings in 2000," she told PM.

However, she said we do not know for sure whether all the attackers were part of the same group.

"Clearly it's a suicide bombing," East Java police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera told a media briefing.

"We can't be open [about] all details yet because we are still identifying victims at the scene and the crime scene is being handled."

He said the full extent of casualties was unclear.

Sorry, this video has expired Video: Witness footage shows a young girl being carried from the blast site (ABC News)

Footage of the attack shows two motorbikes, each with two people on board, coming in to a security post at the entrance to the city's police headquarters before at least one explosion.

The two motorbikes pull up alongside a car and four officers manning the checkpoint. At the moment of the explosion, two civilians appear to be walking into the checkpoint just metres from the motorbikes.

Three of the officers at the checkpoint are standing right by the motorbikes when the detonation happens.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo said the series of suicide attacks in Surabaya was the "act of cowards" and pledged to push through a new anti-terrorism bill to combat networks of Islamist militants in the country.

"This is the act of cowards, undignified and barbaric," Mr Widodo said on Metro TV.

He said he would issue a regulation in lieu of a law next month to force through a new anti-terrorism bill if Parliament failed to pass it.

Turnbull's sympathies for Indonesia, hits out at attackers

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull described the attacks as shocking and cowardly, and said he had written to Mr Widodo expressing Australia's heartfelt sympathy.

"The brutality, the barbarity, the inhumanity, the blasphemy of these terrorists strains our ability to believe it but it's there," Mr Turnbull said.

"These people are the worst of the worst.

"They are threatening civilised nations, they're threatening civilised ways of life. They're threatening people's harmony and religion. They are debasing and defaming Islam, as President Widodo has often said."

There was another attack on a different police station in the city last night, about 12 hours after 14 people — including six suicide bombers — were killed in three separate attacks on Surabaya churches.

The first church attack, at the Santa Maria Roman Catholic Church, killed four people, including one or more bombers, a police spokesman said.

Minutes after the first, there was a second explosion at the Christian Church of Diponegoro that killed two people.

Another two people died in a third attack at the city's Pantekosta Church, the police spokesman said.

Indonesia's chief security minister said police backed by the military would step up security across the country.

"The President has commanded that police, helped by TNI [the armed forces], to exert all power to secure the nation," Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Wiranto said.

ABC/wires

Topics: terrorism, unrest-conflict-and-war, indonesia

First posted</s>SURABAYA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian official: Explosion at Surabaya police headquarters after apparent vehicle attack.
An Indonesian family believed to be connected to the terrorist group Jamaah Ansharut Daulah attacks police headquarters in Surabaya. The attack kills all four perpetrators and injures the perpetrator's daughter, six civilians, and four police officers.