News & Politics - Bali bomb attacks claim 25 lives.

-Louise- · 10-01-2005, 02:09 PM

From the BBC News site:

Quote:

Bomb attacks in two busy tourist areas on the Indonesian resort island of Bali have killed at least 25 people - among them foreign nationals.
More than 100 others were injured in blasts at three restaurants at Kuta beach and Jimbaran that were crowded with evening diners.

Indonesia's president said terrorists were to blame for the bombings - the second in three years.

Attacks in Kuta in 2002 killed 202 people, many of them 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.

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 told the BBC that Raja's noodle and steak restaurant was completely gutted.

"Everything has been blasted out of the building, which is very mangled," she said.

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."

Initial reports suggest that Indonesians have borne the brunt of the attacks, but the casualties also include Australian, US, Japanese and South Korean nationals.

"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."

The blasts come less than two weeks before the third anniversary of bomb attacks that killed 202 people - including 88 Australians.

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.

I cant believe more bombs there, and its coming up to the 3 year anniversary of the 2002 ones.

Lexis · 10-01-2005, 02:21 PM

Those poor, poor people. I just wish we didn't have to keep reading about these tragedies.

*Lauren · 10-02-2005, 01:07 AM

The worst thing is this is totally going to kill their tourisim industry. They'd just started to recover from 2002 and now its happened again.

Samii · 10-02-2005, 02:10 AM

I know. It's dreadful. Those poor people rely so heavily on tourists to survive and I mean, after a second bomb, its going to hit the industry even harder. People (myself included) went back tentatively after the first bomb, because you don't think that it will happen again, but after this second lot, I think its going to have a much more drastic effect on the Balinese people.

-Kelly- · 10-02-2005, 03:37 AM

I saw the news tonight

~Courtney~ · 10-02-2005, 06:48 AM

i was there less than a week ago

when i talked to the locals they were saying how they had just started to recover financially from the 2002 bombings cause they couldnt find work. those poor people

-Kelly- · 10-02-2005, 07:06 AM

And now it's bad for them

deeta · 10-03-2005, 03:54 AM

I'm just mad that these people could do THAT. I mean dude, get a life, would you? But on the other hand, I just think the government should have had their securities integrated after the 2002 bombing very extremely. Bali is one of the biggest income Indonesia has right now, and they should have been a lot more prepared for this thing to happen again and not just in Bali, but in other areas. But then again, with the whole oil crisis, the tsunami recovery, well, the president definitely has a lot in hs mind these days.

-Kelly- · 10-07-2005, 10:00 PM

They said "God told them to do it" whatever