A 2-year-old girl who was injured in an Islamic militant attack at the Oikumene church in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, on Sunday has died, Indonesian police said. Three other children were also injured when a "low explosive" bomb or a Molotov cocktail planted by Islamists at the church exploded.
Fajar Setiawan, East Kalimantan police spokesman, said 2-year-old Ade Intan Marbun died due to complications after suffering burns to more than three quarters of her body. "It affected her respiratory system and efforts to save her failed and she died early Monday," Setiawan told the Associated Press.
The police arrested one of the attackers and identified him as a 32-year-old former terror convict from the West Java town of Bogor. At the time of arrest, the man was wearing a black shirt emblazoned with the words "Jihad, Way of Life."
Reports show that he moved from Bogor to East Kalimantan about a year ago. According to Maj. Gen. Boy Rafli Amar, the national police spokesman, the suspect had been sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail for an attack in 2011. He was released in July 2014.
Indonesia has seen a number of attacks this year, often with home-made bombs or improvised explosive devices (IED). And this was the second explosion at an Indonesian church this year.
In August, a suicide bomber injured a priest with an axe after he failed to detonate a bomb during Sunday Mass in a church in Medan, the provincial capital of North Sumatra.
Last week, violence and chaos marked the rally organised by Muslim hardliners against Jakarta's Chinese Christian governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, popularly known as Ahok, with gangs of jihadists torching police cars and attacking officers late in the night.
