Easter Terror Attack: Suicide Bombers Strike Catholic Church in Indonesia on Palm Sunday (Videos)

We will update this story as details continue to come in.

Update:

National Police Chief General Listyo Sigit Prabowo announced that the two attackers are believed to have been members of the Islamic terror group Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), which has pledged allegiance to ISIS and was responsible for deadly suicide bombings on Indonesian churches in 2018.

Police believe that one of the attackers was believed to have links to a church bombing in the Philippines.

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Two suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral in the Indonesian city of Makassar on Palm Sunday. The blast at the Catholic cathedral wounded more than and a dozen people including church workers and worshippers. Police have been unable to confirm the number of deaths.

The Christian church was filled with congregants at the time of the explosion, celebrating the first day of the Easter Holy Week. A police spokesman stated, “We see that there are victims and parts of human bodies have been torn apart. We do not know yet whether they are from the perpetrator or from the people who were close by”

The two bombers, one who is suspected of being a woman, arrived at the church around 10:20 am on a motorcycle. They tried to enter the cathedral but a security officer stopped them. Shortly there after, the explosion outside the Church took place.

Video footage shows the moment the terrorists detonated their bombs up at the gate of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral in Makassar:

The following video shows some of the destruction that took place from the terrorist bombing:

Authorities are investigating which terrorist groups the bombers came from and whether the attack was linked to recent arrests of suspected militants. In January, a counter-terrorism unit raided an Islamic terrorist hideout in Makassar. Authorities killed two men which were suspected of involvement in twin bombings at a Philippine church in 2019 that killed more than 20 people.

Churches have long been targets of Islamic terrorists in Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim-majority nation.

In 2018, Muslim terrorist group, Jamaah Ansharut Daulah group was responsible for suicide attacks on churches and a police post in the city of Surabaya that killed over 30 people.

The country’s deadliest Islamic terrorist attack took place in Bali in 2002, when bombers killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists.