Bali police probe suicide bomb link

Sunday Oct 2 13:14 AEST

 

Police forensic teams are sifting through the debris left behind Saturday's coordinated bomb attacks on three crowded restaurants on Indonesia's resort island of Bali that killed at least 25 people and wounded more than 100 others.

 

Police said they were looking for evidence over whether suicide bombers were to blame. They believe the blasts were the work of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), al-Qaeda's south-east Asian network.

 

Three Australians - a teenage boy, a woman and a man - were listed as dead by hospital officials. Others known to have been killed including a Japanese citizen and a dozen Indonesians.

The wounded included 17 Australians, six South Koreans, three Americans, three Japanese and one Briton, Reuters reported.

The nearly simultaneous explosions that also wounded at least 100 people came nearly three years after JI militants bombed nightclubs in Bali, killing 202 people, most of them foreign tourists, among them 88 Australians.

 

Bali's police chief Made Mangku Pastika visited one of the three blast sites, at Raja's restaurant in Kuta Beach.

 

Asked if suicide bombers were responsible, he told reporters: "We have not come to that conclusion yet. We need to develop the investigation."

 

"We want to search things that may be overlooked. We need to search and re-search again," Pastika said.

 

Asked if the bombs had been hidden inside the restaurant before the blast or carried in, he said: "We have found a crater on the floor but give us more time so that there is no mistake."

 

The well-respected Pastika is credited with a major role in the capture of many of those involved in the 2002 bombings.

 

Police had blocked off much of the street in front of the restaurant, where a forensics team was at work.

 

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono branded the blasts as acts of terrorism and vowed to catch those responsible.

 

The United States, Britain, Australia and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan also condemned the attacks.

 

Yudhoyono said it was too soon to blame anyone, but security experts said the strikes bore the hallmarks of Jemaah Islamiah, a network seen as the regional arm of al-Qaeda.

 

"We will catch the perpetrators and punish them," Yudhoyono said in Jakarta, adding he would go to Bali.

 

Police said three blasts hit separate 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.

 

"It's just a very hard place to protect if you look at where they hit," said Ken Conboy, a Jakarta-based security expert,.

 

" ... places like Kuta Square, those are just big shopping areas and they're basically outdoors on the street," he said, referring to one of the blast sites near the scene of the 2002 explosions.

 

Ketut Suartana, 33, said he was eating at Jimbaran when the first bomb exploded. The second came just minutes later.

 

"We were eating and suddenly it just went dark. I tried to run but I kept falling over. Then the second blast happened," said Suartana, lying on a hospital bed with scratch marks over his face and chest.

 

"People were in panic. I just tried to save myself."

 

Doctors and medics worked through the night treating the wounded, many still looking stunned and covered in blood.

well home sweet home got hit again.....i hate this....go PAK PASTIKA and SBY!! YOU CAN FIND THEM!!!!!!