The family of Dita Opriyarto who carried out suicide attacks at three churches in Surabaya, IndonesiaAn accelerating motorbike; an explosion; dismembered bodies — the scenes in the Indonesian city of Surabaya this week had a depressingly familiar, almost routine, quality. These suicide attacks, though, were carried out not by conventional attackers but by well-off fathers, mothers and their children, dying together for Islamist ideology. Even the relatives are too appalled to claim them and no cemetery will accept them for burial. Apart from the horror of children in suicide vests, the bombings have huge implications for Indonesia’s efforts to overcome and defuse the threat of Islamist violence. “These kinds of attacks are unprecedented,” said Sidney Jones, of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict in Jakarta.

Source: The Times May 18, 2018 16:14 UTC