New York Post, Monday, October 14, 2002
Osama Eyed In Bali Blasts
By Brad Hunter
The Sari nightclub is reduced to a vacant lot of smoldering ruins after two powerful
bombs blew up a crowd of foreign revelers - mostly Australians.- Reuters
President Bush yesterday slammed the "cowardly" car-bomb attacks that killed 188
people and injured hundreds on the island of Bali - as experts fingered an al Qaeda
offshoot for the latest terror atrocity.
Bomb blasts ripped through two Kura Beach nightclubs on Saturday night, turning the
packed hot spots into fiery deathtraps, raining blood and body parts through the
chaotic streets. The bombings were the deadliest terrorist attacks since Sept. 11,
2001.
Most of the dead and missing are young Australians who traveled to the popular
tropical paradise in Indonesia to party.
The casualties also included two Americans missing and feared dead. One is Jake
Young, 34, a former All-American football player at Nebraska, the Omaha
World-Herald reported. The other was identified by The Los Angeles Times as Steven
Brooks Webster, 41, of Huntington Beach, Calif.
Three Americans were injured. The Times identified one of them as William Steven
Cabler, 42, of Newport Beach, Calif.
It's believed Canadians, Britons and Swedes were also among those killed.
An FBI team is en route to Bali to help with the investigation.
So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the massacre, but one U.S. official said
there was a "definite" terrorist link. A radical Islamic group known as Jemaah
Islamiyah, which has ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, is heavily entrenched in
Indonesia.
"There are a number of reasons that you have to say it might be them [al Qaeda], but
we don't know that," another U.S. official said. "They've been in Indonesia . . . They're
all running from Afghanistan. They've got to go someplace."
The latest terrorist outrage comes on the second anniversary of the attack on the
USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 American sailors.
Outside the rubble of the Sari nightclub yesterday, one charred corpse after another
was taken to the morgue as people scoured the resort for loved ones. Others fled Bali,
fearing more attacks.
Three bombs rocked the resort area in rapid succession
The second bomb exploded at a club 30 yards from Sari.
The third blew up near the U.S. consulate. There were no casualties in that explosion.
Bush yesterday vowed to fight "this global menace," calling the attacks "a cowardly
act designed to create terror and chaos."
"We must together challenge and defeat the idea that wanton killing of innocents
advances any cause or supports any aspirations," Bush said. "And we must call this
despicable act by its rightful name: murder."
The State Department issued an advisory to Americans against traveling to Indonesia
and recommended that U.S. citizens now there leave. The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta
said it was sending non-essential personnel home and "re-evaluating . . . its presence
in Indonesia."
The attacks intensified calls for Indonesia to crack down on radical Muslim rebels.
The U.S. and Singapore have been pressing the world's most populous Muslim nation
to arrest cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, leader of Jemaah Islamiyah and a figure believed to
be a bin Laden ally.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard also called for a crackdown. He described the
slaughter as "wicked, cowardly, barbarous, despicable and brutal."
Shockingly, Bashir blamed the United States, saying, "It would be impossible for
Indonesians to do it. Indonesians don't have such powerful explosives. I think maybe
the U.S. is behind the bombings because they always say Indonesia is part of the
terrorist network."
Copyright 2002 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
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