BALI (INDONESIA): Bombs exploded almost simultaneously on Saturday in two tourist areas of the Indonesian resort island of Bali, killing at least 32 people and injuring at least 100, police and hospital officials said.

The victims included foreign tourists and suspicion for the explosions, which came almost three years to the day of another Bali attack, fell on the Al-Qaeda linked regional militant group Jemaah Islamiyah.

The blasts on the Jimbaran beach and at a bustling outdoor shopping centre in downtown Kuta ``were clearly the work of terrorists,'' police Maj. Gen. Ansyaad Mbai, a top Indonesian anti-terrorism official, told the Associated Press.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the outrage and vowed to hunt down the perpetrators.

Putu Putra Wisada, spokesman at the Sangla Hospital in the capital Denpasar, said 11 dead were removed to the morgue and 38 injured admitted to hospital — eight Australians, two Americans and 28 Indonesians.

A receptionist at the Graha Asih Hospital close to Jimbaran Bay said that at least eight bodies were in its morgue, and that doctors were treating at least 13 people. ``It's a horrible scene,'' said the receptionist, Komang. ``Some people have had their heads blown off.'' The nationalities of the dead were not immediately known.

The blasts came days ahead of the anniversary of the October 12, 2002, twin bombings in Bali that claimed 202 lives, most of them foreign tourists. The Jemaah Islamiyah has been blamed for that attack.

The latest bombs went off at about 7.30 p.m. (1130 GMT) at two restaurants packed with foreign and Indonesian diners.

Wayan Kresna said he witnessed the first bomb at a seafood restaurant on the Jimbaran beach. ``I helped lift up the bodies,'' he told the private El Shinta radio station. ``There was blood everywhere.''

Another explosion hit the three-storey Raja restaurant in the busy outdoor shopping centre of Kuta, 30 km away. Smoke poured from the building, which was badly damaged.

The bomb apparently went off on the second floor of the restaurant, said an AP reporter, who saw three bodies and at least five injured. There was no crater outside the building, another indication that it was not a car bomb. The exact number of blasts was not clear.Since the 2002 Bali blasts, the Jemaah Islamiyah has been tied to at least two other bombings in Indonesia, both in the capital, Jakarta. Those blasts, one at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in 2003 and the other outside the Australian Embassy in 2004, killed at least 23. Western and Indonesian intelligence agency consistently warned that the group was plotting more attacks. Last month, Mr. Yudhoyono said he was especially worried that the extremist network was about to carry out more attacks.

Ken Conboy, author of an upcoming book on Southeast Asian terrorism, said Saturday night's bombings had all the hallmarks of Jemaah Islamiyah. ``It looks like the Jemaah Islamiyah ... They saw the 2002 Bali bombing as their only true success because it inflicted foreign casualties and the collateral damage weren't Muslims.''

— AP

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail