JAKARTA: Indonesian police said on Wednesday that a suspected suicide bomber and a police officer were killed in explosions near a bus station in the eastern part of the capital, Jakarta. There were two blasts in Kampung Melayu that went off five minutes apart late in the evening. It said some people, including police officers, were wounded and taken to a nearby hospital. A hospital official said two policemen and a civilian were treated, and all three were conscious.

Authorities in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority nation have been increasingly worried about a resurgence in radicalism, driven in part by a new generation of militants inspired by the militant Islamic State group. There has been a series of low-level attacks linked to I S since January last year, when four militants mounted a gun and bomb assault in the heart of Jakarta. Eight people were killed in that attack, including the militants.

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2017