Bullying motive probe after high school attack

17-YEAR-OLD boy has been identified as the suspected perpetrator of an attack that shook a mosque at a high school during Friday prayers in Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, injuring at least 54 people, mostly students, investigators said.

- NINIEK KARMINI Associated Press

Witnesses told local television stations that they heard at least two loud blasts around midday, just as the sermon had started, from inside and outside the mosque at SMA 72, a state high school within a navy compound in Jakarta’s northern Kelapa Gading neighbourhood. Students and others ran out in panic as grey smoke filled the mosque.

Police said they had recovered a toy submachine gun belonging to the suspect and inscribed with what appeared to be white supremacist slogans. However, they brushed away speculation that the blasts were a terror attack.

“The suspect is a 17-year-old male student who was undergoing surgery,’ Deputy House Speaker Sufmi Dasco Ahmad told reporters after visiting victims at a hospital.

He gave no more details.