Blasts in Bali tourist area

October 1, 2005 - 10:32PM

Explosions rocked a hotel and department store on the Indonesian tourist island of Bali today, leaving dozens wounded and at least two dead, witnesses and local media reports said.

There was no immediate confirmation of what caused the blasts.

Witnesses said they saw body parts, including a severed head and a leg.

Reports said two explosions happened around 1850 local time near the Four Seasons Hotel in Jimbaran on Bali's south coast, and 10 minutes later near the Matahari department store in the centre of the popular tourist area of Kuta, the site of deadly bombings in 2002, witnesses told local Metro television.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono warned in late August that terrorists were likely to launch an attack in Indonesia in the next two months during what has become known in the country as "bomb season" owing to a series of attacks that has occurred around this time over the past three years.

The attack in Bali in October 2002 left some 202 people dead, mostly foreign tourists. Bomb attacks on the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August 2003 left 12 dead, and an attack outside the Australian embassy in September 2004 killed 11 and injured some 180.

Police have continued to search for two Malaysian fugitives accused of being behind the attacks, Azahari and Noordin, who are also believed to be senior members of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) regional terror group.

JI has been linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network.

Although JI members have been involved in several deadly bombings in Indonesia, authorities have not officially outlawed the organisation which many Muslim leaders claim does not exist.

- DPA

From The Age newspaper