Damn frenzied killers! These Mullahs will burn in hell forever.
Suicide bombers likely behind Bali blasts - official
Sun Oct 2, 2005 10:53 AM BST
By Achmad Sukarsono
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-10-02T095335Z_01_MOL145943_RTRUKOC_0_UK-INDONESIA.xml
BALI, Indonesia (Reuters) - Suicide bombers are likely to have been behind coordinated blasts in Bali that killed 26 people and wounded more than 120, a senior Indonesian counter-terrorism official said on Sunday.
Police said three bombs tore through restaurants packed with evening diners, two at outdoor seafood eateries on Jimbaran Beach and one at a steak bar at Kuta Beach in an area surrounded by shops and jammed with pedestrians, including children. At least 122 people were wounded.
The attacks were the latest in a number of bomb blasts in Indonesia in recent years, several against Western targets, which have hurt tourism and raised concerns among investors about security in the world’s fourth most populous nation.
Asked by Reuters whether the blasts on the resort island were suicide bombings, Ansyaad Mbai said: “Indications lead that way. We found heads detached from their bodies and all of them were around the area of the blasts.”
Mbai, head of the counter-terrorism desk at the office the chief security minister, said he did not know whether the bombers wore explosive vests or carried the devices with them.
A forensics team picked through the debris in the Jimbaran area on Sunday. Chairs and tables had been blown apart but the buildings appeared largely undamaged.
Surfing tour guide Wayan Jipang, 33, there was panic when the bombs went off. “Everyone was trying to run away. I saw limbs, I saw heads on the beach. It was chaos.”
The nearly simultaneous explosions came almost three years after militants linked to al Qaeda bombed nightclubs in Bali, killing 202 people, most of them foreign tourists.
The latest attack occurred just as Bali’s tourism-dependent economy was recovering from the 2002 blasts, which scared off many overseas visitors.
The blasts there and in Jimbaran appeared smaller than the 2002 attack, which included a car bomb that flattened its main nightclub target and ripped into buildings for blocks.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono branded the blasts as acts of terrorism and vowed to catch those responsible.
Security experts said the strikes bore hallmarks of Jemaah Islamiah, a network seen as the regional arm of al Qaeda. Police blame JI for the 2002 blasts and a series of attacks against Western targets in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
Sidney Jones, an expert on Indonesian terrorism and militant organisations with the International Crisis Group, said that with evidence the attacks were suicide bombings, the situation pointed towards involvement by Malaysians Azahari bin Husin and Noordin M. Top, key members of JI blamed for attacks in the past.
Some have speculated the attacks could have come from others seeking to destabilise Yudhoyono’s presidency or upset with massive fuel price hikes his government has pushed through.
HARD TO PREVENT
“We are disappointed that this could happen again in Bali, a tourist zone that we are proud of. With this the work of the intelligence (agencies) comes under question,” said parliament speaker Agung Laksono, whose Golkar Party has supported Yudhoyono.
But Ken Conboy, a Jakarta-based security expert, told Reuters earlier it was difficult to prevent such attacks. “It’s just a very hard place to protect if you look at where they hit.”
Jones’s views were similar. “You think how open Bali is and how impossible it is to effectively secure beach area. I just don’t see that even if they have intelligence … that you could have prevented it,” she said.
A Bali hospital information centre said 26 people died in the blasts, and that so far 16 bodies had been identified – 12 Indonesians including a six-year-old boy, three Australians and a Japanese.
The wounded included 64 Indonesians, 20 Australians, seven South Koreans, four Americans, three Japanese, one French, and one German, with other nationalities unknown.
Despite fears the new attacks would hit tourism, Bali airport duty manager Muhammad Badrudin told Reuters: “So far things are going normally. No increasing number of passengers is leaving.”
But Qantas Airways airport official Dewi in Bali said: “Indeed, we have received many bookings.”
The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta warned Americans on Sunday that they and their interests could be targets of attacks in Indonesia, citing the Bali bombings.
In Seoul, tour operators said growing numbers of travellers were cancelling trips to Bali and even the region, and there were also reports of cancellations of Japanese tours to the island.
Bali, 960 km (595 miles) east of Jakarta, is Indonesia’s most popular destination for foreign tourists.
Australia was preparing to fly military aircraft and two commercial flights to Bali on Sunday to help evacuate people, with Singapore and other neighbours also offering help.
(Additional reporting by Tomi Soetjipto, Ade Rina and Harry Suhartono)
