A would-be suicide bomber attacked a Catholic priest with an axe after his explosives failed to detonate at a packed Mass in Medan, Indonesia, on Sunday.
Police said the explosives in the 17-year-old’s backpack burned without fully exploding. After realising the bomb had failed, the man ran up to the altar, took an axe out of his bag and used it to attack Fr Albertus Pandiangan, who was celebrating Mass at St Joseph’s Catholic Church.
Members of the congregation were able to restrain the man, but the 60-year-old priest’s left hand was slightly injured. The attacker also sustained minor injuries, but there were no serious casualties.
The young man was reportedly carrying a makeshift Islamic State (IS) flag, hand-drawn on a piece of paper. He sat with other worshippers in a pew during the Mass in Indonesia’s third-largest city.
One churchgoer, who gave her name as Vero, told national newspaper the ‘Jakarta Post’ that the attacker had been sitting beside her during the service. “He was fidgety the whole time. He also could not follow our ritual,” she said. At the beginning of the homily, the man took out some cables and connected them to what she suspected was the detonator, she added.
The teenager has been detained and a spokeswoman for Medan police said in a statement that his house will be searched for bomb-making materials.
Mr Suhardi Alius, Chief of Indonesia’s National Counter-terrorism Agency, said they were investigating the suspect’s identity and his potential links to other individuals. He said the 17-year-old was only a “puppet”. “Considering his young age, there has to be someone else who supports him,” he told the Guardian.
Indonesian authorities are increasingly worried about a resurgence in radicalism in the world's largest Muslim-majority country, driven in part by a new generation of jihadis inspired by IS.
The country suffered its first IS-related attack in January, when four people died in a gun and bomb assault.
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