Indonesia city protests suicide bomber burials

SURABAYA: Angry residents of an Indonesian city struck by a wave of suicide bombings refused to let the attackers´ bodies be buried in their neighbourhood on Friday, police said. The attacks on churches and a police station by two families — including a nine and 12-year-old girl — rocked the Southeast Asian nation, which has long struggled with Islamist militancy.Police have said the suicide bomber families — and a third linked to the attacks — were members of a Koran weekend study group and have been tied a local extremist network operating in Indonesia´s second-biggest city Surabaya. Relatives of the two families have not claimed their bodies so police said they planned to bury some of them in a local graveyard, but residents pushed back at the plan. “We´ve had to postpone their funerals,” said East Java police chief Machfud Arifin. A dozen people were killed in the Surabaya attacks including a 15-year-old boy who lived in the neighbourhood where the graveyard is located.“I can understand how my people feel,” said Yunus, a local official, who like many Indonesians goes by one name. “One of the victims was a resident here. The church is also part of this sub-district. Now the bombers are going to be buried here too?” “Their own families don´t want to take the bodies so why should they be buried here?” he added.

from The News International - World https://ift.tt/2IPRLVD