The latest bombings on Bali are believed to be the work of three suicide bombers and bore the hallmarks of the Jemaah Islamiyah extremist network, Indonesia’s anti-terrorism chief said on Sunday.
Powerful explosions ripped through three crowded restaurants on Bali late on Saturday, killing at least 26 people and injuring more than 100.
The attacks, which were centred on areas popular with overseas tourists, came almost three years after the October 12 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians and several other foreigners.
”The modus operandi is very similar to the previous bombings, the use of backpacks, whose remnants were found at the scene of the blasts,” Ansyaad Mbai, the head of the anti-terrorism desk at the security ministry, said.
Mbai said he suspects that Malaysian fugitive terror suspects, Azahari Husin and Noordin Mohammad Top, were the masterminds behind the blasts.
British-trained engineer Azahari and his compatriot Noordin are among the most dangerous Jemaah Islamiyah militants at large and are believed to have played key roles in previous deadly attacks inside Indonesia.
”Our suspicion is based on its similarity to the previous bombings in Kuta,” he said of the link with the pair, referring to Bali’s tourist strip where two bombs exploded almost simultaneously in October 2002, killing 202 people.
Mbai said he has seen the mutilated bodies of suspected suicide bombers believed to be responsible for Saturday’s attacks.
”It is believed that a suicide bomber was involved in each of three sites,” he said.
Bali police chief Made Mangku Pastika said: ”We are investigating the theory that these attacks were carried out by suicide bombers.”
He declined to comment further.
Agung Yudi, a police officer at Nyoman Café, the scene of one of the bombings, said he saw forensic experts picking up pieces of body parts sticking on trees, also suggesting the involvement of suicide bombers.
”I saw skin with hair being removed from the trees,” he told a reporter for news agency AFP.
Carnage and panic
Australian witnesses to the latest string of bombings in Bali spoke on Sunday of scenes of carnage, panic and distress at the sites of the attacks.
Australian cameraman Sean Mulcahy, who was dining near the blast at Kuta, said both areas where the bombs hit were scenes of devastation.
”There’s a lot of injuries, a lot of horrific injuries, particularly in Kuta. We sort of moved around; I spent the night travelling around the various sites, went to Jimbaran, which was an equally devastating scene — bodies were still being brought out of there some three-and-a-half, four hours later,” he told ABC radio.
Mulcahy said he had seen a utility truck drive up to Denpasar hospital with ”two people in the back piled up like sacks — one of them was very clearly deceased and the other very badly injured and they loaded them on to a gurney and took them inside”, he said.
”I mean, the people here are really struggling to keep up with this.”
Australian Adam Frost said some of his friends sustained fatal injuries.
His entire group of nine couples had ”various states of injuries, some didn’t survive and I’m waiting to go to the morgue to identify them”, he said.
Australian Vicky Griffiths, who is recovering in hospital from her injuries, which include ball-bearings lodged in her back, said she had initially thought the first explosion was an accident.
Griffiths, who was holidaying with her husband Kim, had been dining with friends when the blast struck.
”The first explosion I actually thought was a gas bottle, so I … just said to everyone, ‘Stay calm, it’s probably just a gas bottle, we’ll be okay,”’ Griffiths told ABC radio.
”Then another girl … said we should run to the beach so we picked our bags up and were just about to run and the second one went off just behind us … I think about eight feet.
”I was thrown, picked up with the blast to my back and I was picked up and thrown over the table to the ground and I landed on someone, I don’t know who.
”Then Kim came and got me and dragged me along the sand, I couldn’t get up,” she said.
Threat to tourism
The latest bombings on Bali threaten to ruin the island’s tourist industry, reports Meraiah Foley, just as it was recovering from terrorist attacks almost exactly three years ago, with at least one regional government on Sunday urging its citizens to stay away and tour operators predicting an immediate downturn in visitors.
Tourism on the mostly Hindu island took a dive in the aftermath of the 2002 attacks and was just beginning to make a comeback when Saturday’s bombings ripped another hole in the tourist infrastructure.
Indonesia’s Tourism Minister Jero Wacik predicted a sharp drop in tourist numbers, but said he hopes the island will bounce back.
Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard on Sunday urged Australians travelling to Indonesia to rethink their plans.
”They should think very hard about going to Bali,” he told reporters in Sydney.
He said Australia does not have any specific intelligence that another attack on Bali is imminent, but has for some time warned that attacks are possible in Indonesia, which he said ”remains a very dangerous place”.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade renewed its travel warning on Sunday, urging Australians — who flock to Bali by the thousands — to defer non-essential travel to Indonesia and advising those already in the country to consider leaving.
Japan’s foreign ministry had not yet issued travel warnings for Bali on Sunday, spokesperson Akira Chiba said.
But Masabumi Hattori of Marine Jack, a Tokyo-based company that offers diving tours to Bali, said several travellers due to leave for Bali on Sunday had cancelled their trips.
”I think everybody’s waiting to see what happens next. But I do believe people will again avoid Bali as a travel destination,” he said, adding his company was flooded by cancellations after the bombings there in 2002.
Ken Scott, the director of the Thailand-based Pacific Asia Travel Association (Pata), said the impact of Saturday’s bombings on tourism will depend on Indonesia’s response in helping victims and providing information to victims’ friends and families.
But, he added, most travellers are aware that an attack can happen anywhere, at any time.
”Travellers around the world are now a little bit more experienced and wise. Many of them understand that a terrorist strike could happen virtually anywhere. You could potentially be a victim if you stay at home as greatly if you travel,” Scott said by telephone from Kuala Lumpur, where he had attended a Pata meeting. — Sapa-AFP, Sapa-AP