Almost three months after suicide bombers attacked three churches in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city, I stood at the very spot where the first bomb exploded. At 7.15am on Sunday, May 13, two teenage boys drove at high speed through a red light and into the gate of Santa Maria Tak Bercela Catholic church, as parishioners were leaving the first Mass and others were arriving for the second Mass. Six people were killed and more than 30 injured.
Minutes later a woman and her two daughters, aged six and eight, wearing niqabs and veils, arrived at the GKI Protestant church. The security guard on the gate was suspicious. He stopped them – and a bomb exploded. According to one account, “there were many bombs strapped to her body, and to her daughters’, including a big bomb on her leg”.
