Saturday, July 11, 2015

Indonesian radicals linked to the Islamic State were behind Jakarta mall blast


 

Indonesian police have blamed Islamist radicals for a low-powered explosive that detonated in the toilet of a mall on the outskirts of Jakarta on Thursday that mirrored a blast at another mall in February.

CCTV footage showed a man walking into the toilet at the ground floor of the Alam Sutera mall, on the western outskirts of the capital, carrying a bag and exiting shortly before the blast occurred.

The Alam Sutera blast bore similar hallmarks to the low-powered detonation of a chlorine bomb at the ITC Depok on the southern outskirts of Jakarta on Feb. 23.

That incident was the first known use in Indonesia of a chlorine bomb, which has been used extensively by Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq. No one was injured in the Depok blast.

Police blamed the Depok incident on Indonesians who had returned from fighting alongside Islamic State in Syria, although they have still not named any suspects in the case.

 

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