An unidentified motorcycle driver carried out an apparent suicide bombing at a police headquarters in central Indonesia, police said on Monday.
Police chief Lt. Col. Susnadi said the man was trying to enter the station in the central Sulawesi town of Poso when his bomb went off, killing him instantly.
A nearby construction worker was hit in his hands by shrapnel. No police were hurt or killed.
“He resisted when station guards stopped him in the entrance post,” said Lt. Col. Susnadi. “But about 15 metres from the post, the bomb he was carrying went off near the mosque.”
Lt. Col. Susnadi said the man was between 30 and 35 years old. He said that so far no one has acknowledged knowing the man. He added that the police were checking where the motorcycle came from and if the man was from the area.
Poso has a history of violence. A Muslim-Christian conflict there killed at least 1,000 people from 1998 to 2002.
In Jakarta, national police spokesman Brig. Gen. Boy Rafli Amar said a preliminary investigation showed similarities between the attack and previous terrorist attacks against the police.
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, has seen a series of terrorist attacks since the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.
In recent years, smaller and less deadly strikes have targeted the government, mainly police and anti-terrorism forces and local residents instead of tourists.
In April 2011, a suicide bomber blew himself up during Friday prayers at a police complex in the West Java town of Cirebon, wounding 28 people in the first attack on a mosque in the country.
Last month, Indonesia’s elite anti-terrorism squad arrested two suspected militants, including a would-be suicide bomber, in connection with a plot to bomb the Myanmar Embassy.
