JAKARTA, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- A suicide bomber set of an explosion inside a church in Surakarta in Indonesia's Central Java province, injuring at least 22 people, police said.
The blast occurred after a service had ended in the Sepenuh Injil Bethel Church, the Jakarta Post reported. The bomber apparently died, investigators said.
Gen. Timor Pradopo, national police chief, said 11 of the injured suffered serious wounds and were being treated at a hospital in Surakarta. Others were released after treatment.
The police chief said it was not known if the incident was connected to a bomb found earlier in Surakarta.
"We are still waiting for the identification and laboratory examination process to finish," he said.
Indonesia President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said the Sunday bombing was related to a similar attack on a police compound in Cirebon in West Java in April.
"We have found in the preliminary results of our investigation that the suicide bomber [in Surakarta] was a member of the Cirebon terrorist network, which carried out a similar terrorist act in Cirebon some time ago," the president was quoted as saying.
In Bandung, priest Albertus Patty, coordinator of the Association of Indonesian Churches' theological commission, said the Surakarta tattack pointed to the country's weak security, the Post reported.
Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, is a secular democracy.
