Suicide bomber attacks Indonesia church

At least one person was killed on Sunday when a suicide bomber attacked an Indonesian church, officials said, the latest sectarian incident to hit the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation. "I can confirm that there was a suicide bomb attack in Church Bethel Injil at 10:55," Central Java provincial police spokesman Djihartono told AFP. The church is in Solo, the hom town of militant Islamist spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir who was jailed in June for 15 years for funding a terrorist group that was planning attacks against Westerners and political leaders. Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Djoko Suyanto said two people were killed but refused to clarify whether one of them was the bomber. "One died instantly at the site, the other died in a hospital," he said, adding that several other people were wounded. An AFP correspondent saw the apparent bomber's body on the ground at the church's main entrance, wearing a white shirt and black trousers, and with his left hand severed. The minister said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono strongly condemned "the act of terrorism." "Nothing can justify this inhuman act," he told ElShinta radio earlier. "It is the task of everybody to overcome this act of terrorism." One witness told ElShinta that four people were killed in the blast, which occurred after mass as people were leaving the church, but police were unable to confirm that. A local policeman told AFP 15 people were wounded and had been rushed to nearby hospitals. Most of Indonesia's 200 million Muslims are moderates, but the country has struggled to deal with a radical fringe of extremists who have carried out numerous attacks including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people. Indonesia's constitution guarantees freedom of religion but rights groups say violence against minorities including Christians and the Ahmadiyah Islamic sect has escalated recently. In June a Muslim cleric was sentenced to one year in jail for inciting hundreds of people to burn churches and attack police. Seventeen men were also jailed for up to five months for the February attacks on churches in in the town of Temanggung, on Java. Police have also been investigating a Good Friday plot to blow up a Jakarta church and a book bomb campaign targeting Muslim moderates and counter-terrorism officials. No one was killed in those incidents. Yudhoyono's government has faced growing criticism over its failure to respond to the spate of religious hate crimes. Human rights groups also expressed outrage after a member of the Ahmadiyah sect, which are regarded as heretics by some conservative Muslims, was sentenced to six months for defending himself and others from a lynch mob which killed three of his friends. The sentence was the same or stiffer than those handed out to 12 Islamic extremists who led the mob in the February rampage.