BBC, Saturday, 1 October 2005, 18:26 GMT 19:26 UK
Bali bomb attacks claim 25 lives
[PHOTO: Survivors have been taken to local hospitals.]
Bomb attacks in two busy tourist areas on the Indonesian resort island of Bali have
killed at least 25 people.
More than 100 others were injured in at least three blasts which took place just before
2000 local time (1200 GMT).
Devices went off at three restaurants - two in an area by the sea at Jimbaran, the
other at Kuta beach, the resort most popular with Western tourists.
In October 2002, bomb attacks blamed on Islamic extremists killed 202 people in
Kuta, among them many foreign tourists.
Local TV has been showing pictures of bloodied and confused survivors and collapsed
buildings. Shattered glass littered the street in Kuta.
A hospital official told Reuters news agency that at least 35 wounded foreigners had
been taken to the island's main hospital.
Local media said police had found a number of other unexploded devices.
No group claimed the attack in the hours immediately afterwards.
However BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the finger of suspicion is
already pointing towards the extremist regional group Jemaah Islamiah (JI) which was
blamed for the 2002 bombings.
Bali - a predominantly Hindu island popular with Western tourists - represents a soft
and tempting target for Islamist extremists linked to al-Qaeda, our correspondent
says.
'Chaos on streets'
The exact number of blasts, which happened almost simultaneously, was not clear.
Some witnesses said they heard at least two explosions at each location.
A British tourist who was in a building next door to a restaurant that was hit in Kuta
said there was a "thunderous boom" that caused all the shop's windows to blow out.
"It was just chaos," Daniel Martin told the BBC.
He said there were people lying in the streets with serious injuries, with everyone
pitching in to help.
Journalist Maris Bakkalupulo went to the scene of the Kuta blast, and saw a noodle
and steak restaurant that was badly damaged.
"It's completely gutted," she told the BBC. "Everything has been blasted out of the
building, which is very mangled."
Another tourist in Bali, Anthony Brearley from Australia, said he heard two explosions
in Kuta.
"I think the locals still think it's a gas explosion. I think they genuinely think it couldn't
happen again," he told the BBC News website.
"All the Australian people automatically thought 'bombs', and they were gone."
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said at least one Australian was killed
and three injured. A Japanese national was also among the dead, officials said.
"These are clearly terrorist attacks because the targets were random and public
places," said Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
"We will hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice."
Warnings
The blasts come less than two weeks before the third anniversary of bomb attacks
that killed 202 people - many of them foreign tourists.
JI, the group blamed for the 12 October 2002 bombings, is also suspected of being
behind a suicide bombing at the Marriott hotel in Jakarta in 2003, and a suicide
bombing at the Australian embassy last September.
The authorities had warned that militants had been planning further attacks on
Western targets in Indonesia, although there had been no particular alerts over the
past few days.
© BBC MMIV
|
