Motorbike driver throws molotov cocktail at church on Borneo, four children burned

SEVERAL children were injured after a man wearing a T-shirt saying ‘Jihad, Way of Life’ threw a molotov cocktail at churchgoers in Indonesia.

An Indonesian policeman stands guard outside the Oikume Church after a man allegedly threw molotov cocktails towards it. Picture: AFP

AN EXPLOSION outside a church on Borneo island injured four children on Sunday, Indonesian police said.

Several motorbikes were also damaged in the explosion in the parking lot of the Oikumene Church in Samarinda, the provincial capital of East Kalimantan province, said national police spokesman Major General Boy Rafli Amar. The children, aged two to four years-old, suffered burn injuries, Major Amar said.

Media reports cited local police spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Fajar Setiawan as saying the explosion came from a molotov cocktail thrown by a man riding on a motorbike. The man jumped into a nearby river but was captured by locals and handed over to police.

Several children were injured after a man allegedly threw low-explosive cocktail bombs at a church during a Sunday service. Picture: AFP

TV footage showed the injured man lying on the deck of a motorboat. He was wearing a black shirt with the words “Jihad, Way of Life.” Major Amar identified the man as a 32-year-old former terror convict from the West Java town of Bogor who was sentenced to three and a half years in prison over a 2011 terror attack and was released in July 2014. He moved to East Kalimantan about a year ago.

It was the second explosion at a church in Indonesia this year. In August, a would-be suicide bomber failed to detonate a bomb during a Sunday Mass in a church in Medan, the provincial capital of North Sumatra in western Indonesia, but he managed to injure a priest with an axe before being restrained. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, has carried out a sustained crackdown on militant networks since the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.