ABC AUSTRALIA, 2/10/2005
Blasts hit Bali: Tim Palmer is at the scene
Tim Palmer, ABC's Indonesia Correspondent - 2/10/2005
Terrorists have again struck in Bali. This time they have targeted restaurants at Kuta
and Jimbaran Beach. The ABC's South-East Asian correspondent Tim Palmer has
been at the local hospitals. He says in this interview with Barrie Cassidy from The
Insiders, that at least 24 people have been killed and 120 have been injured.
What we've learnt from casualties, first of all the death toll. There's a whiteboard
outside the morgue at Sanglah Hospital and it appears all of the bodies from all of the
hospitals, around seven places people have been treated, have been brought to
Sanglah in the middle of Denpasar.
There are 25 names on that whiteboard. I can tell you one of those is of an Australian,
a young male around the age of 16. We won't say his name, because we're not sure
all his relatives have been notified at this stage. The vast majority of the dead on that
list are Indonesians, but also victims from Japan and Korea. We understand there
were a significant number of Koreans dining on Jimbaran Beach when those bombs
went off.
We've also been told, and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has since confirmed
this, that two other unidentified Westerners it's believed are highly likely ... (SOUND
LOSS) ... of Australians will reach three. There are two other unidentified Westerners
beyond that whom it is possible that they could be Australians. But certainly it
appears that officials are leaning towards the thought that three people might be dead
from Australia at this stage.
Beyond the dead, some 17 Australians have been treated for injuries. Many of them
have been sent for CAT scans over the last few hours. You'll hear stories and some
interviews soon from Australians, but many people Australians, Indonesians and
others have told us that the wounds were largely shrapnel wounds and what's being
found in people's bodies by X-rays are ball bearings and other bits of glass and metal.
Particularly ball bearings though. And those CAT scans are being done on the
Australian victims to ascertain whether they have entered people's brains. So clearly
worrying times for some of the doctors.
We know one of the Australian patients in Sanglah Hospital they are seriously
concerned about. Most of the others are in a reasonable condition. Two Medivac
flights are being prepared to come from Singapore to come here particularly for
Australians. That's how things stand at the moment. Not all the figures have been
collated, so that may not be the end of the casualty or even the death toll figures,
unfortunately.
Take us through the sequence of events
Well, what we understand happened was that this was a coordinated attack, clearly.
Around eight o'clock at night on the beach at Jimbaran Bay, first one explosion
rocked diners and all the diners there are actually out on the sand on tables and
chairs. This was out in the open. Some people have suggested these bombs might
have been buried in the beach and as that group scattered and others around them
scattered a second explosion went off. People described that as bigger, whether they
were simply closer to that or not, it's hard to tell.
Certainly the group of Australians there, around 18 people we now believe, from
Newcastle in one group, they were caught in that second blast and a significant
number of them are in hospital, mostly with shrapnel wounds, mostly ball bearings as
they scattered.
Around the same time as that was happening in Jimbaran Bay, around five kilometres
further north in the main tourist area of Kuta, at Kuta Square, a shopping centre area,
there's a three-storey restaurant called Raja. It appears that, again, it was two
explosions. That's largely from what we've seen of the damage because the first floor
seems separately damaged from the ground floor and we think a bomb has gone off in
the first floor and another bomb downstairs has blown out the entire front of the
restaurant. Again, it had footpath seating.
That whole area has been destroyed. The whole front of the restaurant is missing,
clearly a significant number of casualties. These bombs are obviously not the size of
the bomb let off in cars at the Marriott Hotel or the Jakarta embassy and nowhere
near the ... (SOUND LOSS) ... Paddy's Bar almost three years ago to the day in Bali.
But still, considering the size of these bombs, smaller attacks, the casualty figures
are significantly higher and I guess that suggests how carefully they've been targeted
here.
Tim, of course, Bali has been through this before as you mentioned. How is the
system coping this time around?
Certainly it's coping better, the system of casualties and handling emergencies. And
part of that is all of these Australian casualties or nearly all of them, certainly the
serious ones, are in an Australian-built unit at Sanglah Hospital.
There is none of the chaos we saw there at this stage three years ago. They are in an
intensive care unit designed for burns, although the nature of the bombs in this case,
not many people are actually suffering serious burns of any sort. Facilities are better.
Of course, there is nowhere near the overwhelming number of casualties as there was
three years ago. But still, a very significant attack. A far higher death toll than in the
Marriott bombing, double that roughly, and double the number of people killed at the
Australian embassy.
Once again, not only will this devastate the people involved personally, directly
through injury and loss of life, but this is going to devastate the economy here. I could
give you the idea that the few weeks now as we come into Ramadan and with some
holiday seasons from Australia and other places, it's probably the most heavily
booked in Bali that it has been since the recovery of the Bali bombing in 2002 and
many Balinese will be waking up today believing they are going back to square one.
Just finally, Tim, I presume that Jemaah Islamiah is again the suspect?
You presume and I'd have to say it's the universal presumption here and overseas. Not
just because Dr Azahari bin Hussin and Noor Din Mohammed Top, the two ring
leaders wanted for those previous bombers through the Marriott and the Australian
embassy bombings, the Indonesians have not been able to pick them up, despite
coming close on numerous occasions. There had been a fear they would strike again.
Despite the fact these attacks have a slightly different nature in the types of bombs
used, there is a telling characteristic and that is that the Bali bombing, the Marriott,
the Jakarta embassy and now this all occurred in the few months leading up to
Ramadan - August, September, October - and this appears to be a tell-tale pattern
that points the finger directly at either Jemaah Islamiah's Indonesian operation or
certainly those men with fellow travellers of very like mind.
Tim Palmer, ABC's Indonesia Correspondent
Tim Palmer is the ABC's South East Asia correspodent, based in Jakarta
This Viewpoint is adapated from Barrie Cassidy's live interview with Tim Palmer, first
broadcast on The Insiders the morning following the latest bomb attacks in Bali on
October 2, 2005.
© ABC 2005 |
