Bali bombs are "suicide attacks"
Bali (AsiaNews) - Suicide bombers are likely to have been behind coordinated blasts in Bali that killed 25 people and wounded more than 100, a senior Indonesian counter-terrorism official said on Sunday.
Ansyaad Mbai, the head of the anti-terrorism desk at the security ministry, said the attacks bear the hallmarks of the Jemaah Islamiah extremist network.
He also said the attacks, which ripped through crowded restaurants, were likely to have involved three suicide bombers: "We found bodies whose heads and legs are missing," he added, suggesting that the extent of the mutilation indicated the bodies belonged to suicide bombers.
Yesterday, around 8.00 pm, three bombs tore through restaurants packed with evening diners, two at outdoor seafood eateries on Jimbaran Beach and one at a steak bar at Kuta Beach in an area surrounded by shops and jammed with pedestrians, including children. At least 107 people were wounded and there are fears the toll could rise.
The nearly simultaneous explosions came nearly three years after militants linked to al Qaeda bombed nightclubs in Bali, killing 202 people, most of them foreign tourists.
The latest attack occurred just as Bali's tourism-dependent economy was recovering from the 2002 blasts, which scared off many overseas visitors.
Kuta town square is also the scene of the October 12, 2002, nightclub bombings.
Chairs and tables had been blown apart but the buildings appeared largely undamaged; piles of shattered glass littered the street. A tour guide present at the site said: "It was panic. Everyone was trying to run away. I saw limbs, I saw heads on the beach. It was chaos".
So far 15 bodies had been identified, comprising 12 Indonesians, including a six-year-old boy, two Australians and a Japanese national. Australia said three of its citizens were feared dead.
The wounded included 49 Indonesians, 14 Australians, six South Koreans, four Americans, three Japanese, with other nationalities unknown as of early Sunday morning.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono revealed accurate intelligence information that such attack may have been planned by terrorists since July. "I had the information from intelligence service that certain cells of terrorist group both in Malaysia and in the Philippines had seriously planned the action in Jakarta (on July that time). But after security officials secured and blocked any public area with a very tight manner, they have probably altered the plan and changed the location of bombing," explained the President. Expressing deep condolence to the victim's family, he said he would be in Bali today.
The attacks pile on the problems for the former general, who marks his first year in office on October 20.
Up to now no group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
However, Rohan Gunaratna, head of terrorism research at Singapore's Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, said only the militant Islamic group Jemaah Islamiah (JI) is capable of mounting a coordinated and simultaneous attack against a Western target in Indonesia. The prominent Asian expert on terrorism said the Indonesian government should now formally ban the JI as a criminal or terrorist group.
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