Four men wielding samurai swords were killed Wednesday by Indonesian cops after they staged an ISIS-inspired attack on a police station on Sumatra island, where an officer was killed, officials said.
The four swordsmen and their driver rammed a minivan into a gate at the Riau Police Headquarters in Pekanbaru to carry out the latest in a spate of militant attacks in the Muslim-majority country.
“When the car broke through into the Riau police headquarters, it was blocked by policemen,” police spokesman Setyo Wasisto told reporters.
“Then four of the men got out from the car and attacked police using long swords,” he added. Two officers suffered cuts during the rampage.
During his attempt to flee, the driver fatally struck a police officer and injured a journalist who had been covering a story at the provincial station.
“The one who escaped has been captured and secured at Pekanbaru police station,” Wasisto said.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement carried by the terror group’s Aamaq news agency.
At least four of the men were affiliated with the ISIS network in Indonesia and had previously tried to help terror detainees who were rioting last week at the Mobile Brigade headquarters, police said.
“They all pledged allegiance to [ISIS leader] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” Wasisto said, the Jakarta Post reported.
“They were part of the Islamic State of Indonesia (NII) network in Riau, which is part of the ISIS network in Indonesia,” he said, referring to Negara Islam Indonesia, also known as Darul Islam, a group that aims to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia.
Local media reported that one of the dead attackers may have had a bomb strapped to his body, but Wasisto did not comment on the accounts.
Police were looking for a sixth man suspected of being involved in the police station attack.
Wednesday’s incident comes after two families, including kids as young as 7, carried out suicide bombings Sunday and Monday in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city — killing 26 people, including 13 attackers.
ISIS also claimed responsibility for those attacks.
Although NII is separate from the Jamaah Ansharut Daulah group behind the recent bombings, Wasisto said they were all part of the wider pro-ISIS network in Indonesia, according to The Jakarta Post.
Earlier this month, six officers at a high-security jail on the outskirts of the capital of Jakarta were killed by Islamic militant inmates who took hostages until being overcome by police.
The weekend attacks were the worst in Indonesia – which starts the holy fasting month of Ramadan on Thursday — since the 2005 Bali bombings, which claimed the lives of 20 people.
The country is set to host the Asian Games from Aug. 18 to Sept. 2, as well as an IMF-World Bank meeting in Bali in October.
With Post wires