Multiple explosions shake a mosque in an Indonesian high school and injure 55

Multiple explosions shook a mosque at a high school during Friday prayers in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, injuring at least 55 people, mostly students.

Multiple explosions shook a mosque at a high school during Friday prayers in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, injuring at least 55 people, mostly students. Police tried to dissuade speculation that the blasts were a terror attack and said they were investigating.

Witnesses told local television stations that they heard at least two loud blasts around midday, from inside and outside the mosque, just as the sermon had started at the mosque at SMA 27, a state high school within a navy compound in Jakarta’s northern Kelapa Gading neighborhood.

Students and others ran out in panic as gray smoke filled the mosque.

Most of the victims suffered minor to severe injuries from glass shards and burns. The cause of the explosions was not immediately known but they came from near the mosque’s loudspeaker, according to Jakarta Police Chief Asep Edi Suheri.

The injured were rushed to nearby hospitals, from where some were sent home after initial treatment but 20 students remained hospitalized for burns, three of them with serious injuries, the police chief said.