Explosion at Buddhist temple in Jakarta

An explosive device has gone off at a Buddhist temple in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, injuring one person.

According to police, the low-intensity blast happened at the Ekayana Buddhist Centre last evening.

Local media reported that the device went off inside next to a glass door but had caused little damage. A second device emitted smoke but failed to explode, national police chief detective Sutarman said.

Neither police nor the centre said who may have been behind the blasts.

There has been growing anger in Indonesia, which has the world’s biggest Muslim population, at the plight of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

“It was clearly explosive materials but of very low intensity,” said Sutarman, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

“They were placed at a glass door, which was broken.” However, the centre said in a statement that there was “no damage at all’’.

National police spokesman Ronny Sompie added that the blast “injured one person, who sustained an abrasion to the hand’’.

Police, including members of the bomb squad and the elite counter-terror unit, were at the scene, he said.

The temple, one of the biggest in Jakarta, said it hoped the blasts would “not cause any unrest in the religious community’’.

In May, the police had foiled a plot to bomb the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta by Islamic hardliners as anger grew over the plight of the Rohingya.

Several outbreaks of violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar have tempered international optimism about the country’s dramatic political reforms as it emerges from decades of military rule.