Jakarta police increased surveillance of churches after an apparent suicide bomb attack at a church in the south of the country that killed two people.

The bomb was detonated at around 11 a.m. at a church in Solo, officially called Surakarta, a city of half a million people on Central Java island.

"The police chief has given instructions to secure Jakarta so things will remain calm," Jakarta Police spokesman Cmdr. Baharudin Djafar said Sunday, as quoted by tempointeraktif.com.

"Whether more personnel will be placed at houses of worship, that is up to the respective metropolitan police divisions," he said.

Solo police said two people died in the attack on the Bethel Injil Sepenuh Church -- the Bethel Full Gospel Church of Indonesia. The dead are the suspected suicide bomber and a church-goer who was among the 15 people injured but who died later in hospital.

One witness, Fani, told a local television station the blast left people dazed.

"Everyone was screaming," she said. "I saw fiery sparks and, near the entrance, a man dead on the ground. People around him were splattered with blood."

The government and other groups condemned the attack that happened as worshipers were leaving the church.

Indonesian Security Minister Djoko Suyanto called the attack "inhuman" and people should remain alert to such acts.

"It is the task of everybody to overcome this act of terrorism," he said.

Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali also condemned the attack.

"A violent act such as this is not praiseworthy [and] condemned by everyone and every religion," he said. "We hope that the police investigate this to the roots and bring those guilty to justice. I hope the police eradicate people like that."

Nusron Wahid, head of GP Ansor, the youth wing of Indonesia's largest Muslim organization Nadhlatul Ulama, said the attack mars the country's image of a being an ethnically tolerant nation.

Indonesia is officially a secular country but the majority of its 237 million population are Muslim. Successive governments since the 1960s have implemented various laws to guarantee religious freedom, although inter-religious violence erupts from time to time.

The government recognizes six official religions -- Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism.

A census last year found 85 percent of the population are Muslim and nearly 13 percent are Christian -- 9 percent Protestant and 4 percent Roman Catholic. Nearly 2 percent are Hindu and less than 1 percent are Buddhist.

The attack in Solo comes after clashes this month between Christian and Muslim groups that left six people dead and around 80 injured in Ambon, capital of Indonesia's Maluku province -- also known as the Moluccan Islands.

Rioting broke out during the funeral of Muslim motorcycle taxi driver, who was killed in a road accident.

Police were helped by several hundred troops to quell street fighting after text messages circulated to Muslims that the driver had been set upon by Christians, the BBC said.

Ethnic relations are uneasy in Maluku, formerly known as the Spice Islands and which is culturally and geographically associated with the more Christian Melanesia. Maluku is around 55 percent Muslim and 45 percent Christian.

Tensions periodically erupt into deadly street fighting in Maluku, especially since 1980 after the federal government in Jakarta relocated many Muslim migrants from the more densely populated Java Island.

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