Indonesia: Mosque suicide blast injures 26

A suicide bomber has blown himself up in an Indonesian mosque, wounding 26 people in militants’ first attack against a mosque in the predominantly Muslim country.

The bombing happened during Friday prayers inside a police compound in the West Java town of Cirebon, and many of the victims were officers.

They were rushed to hospitals with multiple wounds, said Yeni Rahmawati, a hospital spokeswoman.

Indonesia, a secular, predominantly Muslim nation of 237 million, has been hit by a string of al Qaida-linked terrorist attacks since the 2002 bombings on two crowded Bali nightclubs.

Many of the 260 people killed in those attacks have been foreign tourists.

In the last year, however, militants seeking to carve out an Islamic state have said the country’s moderate leaders and security forces would be their main targets. They have attacked several police posts since then, but never a mosque.

West Java police chief, Maj Gen Suparni Parto, said the mangled body of the suicide bomber was found at the scene.

The man was apparently wearing a suicide vest beneath his black Islamic robes and sitting among dozens of worshippers when he set off the bomb, said Agus Riyanto, a police spokesman. The bomber shouted “God is Great” as he detonated his device.