Two children were rescued from the Wonocolo low-cost apartments (Rusunawa) in Sidoarjo, East Java, late on Sunday evening, following a premature bomb explosion. Puguh, an apartment tenant, said the two children, a boy and a girl, were rescued from the apartment alive. They were apparently outside the room where the homemade bomb prematurely went off.
Three of their family members reportedly died in the blast. “I checked the blast site and found their family members laying on the floor with blood all over the place. They are presumably dead,” Puguh said as quoted by local news site surya.co.id.
Puguh identified the victims as the father, mother and their eldest son. “We took the children out from the apartment, but we didn’t touch other victims in the damaged room,” Puguh said.
Meanwhile, East Java Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Frans Barung Magera told Kompas TV that the two surviving children were being treated at the Khotijah hospital in Surabaya. Frans said the police had yet to recover the bodies of the three victims, adding that a police investigation was under way.
Eyewitnesses reported that the explosion took place at the apartment’s fifth floor of Block B at 9 p.m. The blast occurred only 14 hours after three bombs ripped through three churches in Surabaya on Sunday morning. The church attacks claimed at least 14 lives and wounded dozens of others. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the suicide attacks against the three churches via its propaganda news agency Amaq.
