One week on from the suicide bombings of three churches in the Indonesian city of Surabaya, the number of dead has been confirmed at 18. This includes the six bombers, who were all members of the same family.
Among the Christian victims were two young brothers, Vincentius Evan Hudojo, 11, and Nathanael Ethan Hudojo, eight, who were two of the six people killed at Santa Maria Catholic Church on 13 May.
The dead boys’ mother, Angelina, was one of the many injured during the attacks, and attended their funeral still bandaged and attached to an intravenous drip, reported Catholic news agency UCAN.
Six Christians were killed in the second attack when a bomb exploded outside the Pentecostal Church of Surabaya. Had the bomb detonated inside the church the death toll would have been “unimaginable”, Yonathan Budiantoro, pastor of the church, said last week.
The third explosion, at Diponegoro Indonesian Christian Church, injured a security guard but there were no fatalities.
The six members of the family who attacked the churches have been named as Firman Halim, 15, and his 17-year-old brother, Yusuf, who attacked Santa Maria Catholic Church; their father, Dita Oepriarto, 47, who attacked the Pentecostal Church of Surabaya; and the mother, Puji Kuswati, 43, and her two daughters, Fadhila, 12, and Pamela Rizkita, nine, who attacked Diponegoro Indonesian Christian Church.
The bombings were the first to target churches in Surabaya, previously well-known for its tolerance, and has left those caught up in them deeply traumatised, said UCAN.
Neighbours of the bombers reacted with shock when they heard who had carried out the attacks. Wery Tri Kusuma told the UK’s Guardian newspaper: “I knew them every day for years. Puji was a nurse but she quit her job at the hospital because she felt nauseous at the sight of blood, and didn’t like seeing people in pain. So how can it be that she did this to her children?”
