An explosion at a mosque in Indonesia's capital Jakarta during prayers that injured dozens of people could have been an attack, officials indicated, with a 17-year-old identified as the "suspected perpetrator".
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The country's deputy house speaker Sufmi Dasco Ahmad, speaking to media after visiting a hospital, said the suspect was currently undergoing surgery.
Jakarta city police chief Asep Edi Suheri told reporters 55 people had been admitted to hospitals with a range of minor to serious injuries, including burns from the blast at the mosque on Friday inside a school complex in the Kelapa Gading area.
Witnesses told local television stations that they heard at least two loud blasts around midday, just as the sermon had started at the mosque at SMA 27, a state high school within a navy compound.
Students and others ran out in panic as grey smoke filled the mosque.
Most of the victims suffered minor to severe injuries from glass shards. The cause of the blasts was not immediately known but they came from near the mosque's loudspeaker, according to Suheri.
People were rushed to nearby hospitals. Some were soon sent home but 20 students remain in hospital care, three of them with serious injuries, the police chief said.
Suheri said an anti-bomb squad that was deployed at the scene found toy rifles and a toy gun near the mosque.
with AP
Australian Associated Press
