Four samurai sword wielding ISIS terrorists attack a police station in Indonesia.

Investigators inspect the car the attackers drove into a gate to start their attack. AFP. 

Four samurai sword wielding ISIS terrorists attacked a police station in Indonesia, killing one officer and wounding two others before being shot and killed by police. AFP. The men rammed their vehicle into the police station gates and then began attacking police officers in the station. The officer was killed by the ramming attack. An ISIS affiliate claimed responsibility for the attack. The attack was unrelated from the ISIS attacks in Indonesia earlier in the week that saw an entire family blow themselves up at various churches, as the ISIS affiliate that took credit for that attack was a separate one. The two attacks have Indonesia on edge as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins on Thursday. Traditionally, ISIS has been very active during Ramadan. 

My Comment:

Another disturbing attack out of Indonesia and one that is starting to show a trend of increased ISIS activity in the country. It comes on the heels of a major bombing spree and a prison riot also claimed by ISIS. It is very clear that though ISIS has been greatly reduced as a global player, its affiliate groups are still a major threat.  Indonesia seems to be especially in danger as they have multiple groups in existence that support ISIS. 

Thankfully, these attackers were kind of stupid. Indonesia has fairly strict gun control laws, though not as strict as some as it appears that some people can get a permit own handguns at least. Still, this is not a country where you can expect to find armed civilians around. If they had attacked almost anywhere else they probably could have done some serious damage. 

So what did these attackers do? They went to the one place where they knew that there would be people there to stop them with firearms. The result was fairly predictable. Only one officer was killed, and he was hit by a car, and all four attackers were shot dead. 

Had these attackers been a little bit smarter and chosen a target where people couldn't fight back they could have killed quite a few people before police or solider arrived to put them down. The news articles I have read described the swords as "samurai" style weapons and if true they had some fairly serious killing potential. But even a rusty knife can kill a large number of people if they can't fight back. 

Even if they had left the swords at home they could have killed more people if they just stuck to ramming people with their van. We have seen how successful those attacks have been globally and I bet if they had done that, plus followed it up with the sword attack, they might have killed 10+ people, assuming they targeted anywhere else but an active police station. Thankfully they did not choose that either. 

It's possible that they had planned to steal the officers weapons but that rarely seems to work out. We have seen that play out a few times in France as well and it always ends with the attacker shot. Police and soldiers rarely work alone and even if you manage to take a gun from them you aren't going to figure out how to use it quickly enough to turn it on any other police or soldiers in the area. It's a fool's errand but one that seems fairly common, thankfully enough. I'm not sure if that is what these terrorists were trying to do but I would not be surprised if that had been their plan.

Still, the entire situation seems a little surreal to me. A bunch of samurai sword armed terrorists attacking a police station sounds like something out of a kung fu movie, not reality. Thankfully, in the real world, a bunch of guys with swords will end up pretty dead if they try to take on people with guns. It's why the military doesn't use swords anymore so these guys probably should have considered that before they attacked. 

As the report mentioned Ramadan starts tomorrow and there already have been some serious attacks. I am hoping that these are not a sign of things to come but given how Ramadan has gone for the past few years I am not holding my breath. I would not be surprised if there is another major attack soon, and this time in Europe or America. I hope I am wrong but if the past is anything to go on we need to stay vigilant.