October 3, 2005 - 1:10PM
Indonesia's capital was on top alert today after the president warned of more attacks following three suicide bombings on Bali island, where a chilling video shot by a tourist showed a suspected bomber clutching a backpack as he strolled past diners moments before one of the blasts.
The near-simultaneous bombings, which killed 26 and injured 122 on Saturday, appeared to have been planned by South-East Asia's two most-wanted men, Indonesian anti-terrorism official Major General Ansyaad Mbai said yesterday.
The Age Indonesia correspondent Mark Forbes reports that while Indonesian officials feel they've made significant progress in finding those responsible for the bombings, the alleged Malaysian masterminds - Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohamed Top - have eluded authorities since the 2002 Bali bombings.
"They (police) will be focusing on individuals fairly quickly there, and there is an expectation that the investigation will move apace," Forbes said.
But neither of chief suspects were among the three suspected bombers, whose decapitated remains were found at the scenes.
The attack came three years after 202 people - 88 of them Australian - were killed in nightclub bombings on Bali, Indonesia's premier resort island.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono warned that terrorists could be planning more strikes in the world's most populous Muslim nation as Jakarta's police chief elevated the capital's security status to top alert, putting two-thirds of its police force on stand by.
"The terrorists are still looking for soft targets," Yudhoyono said at a news conference yesterday after getting a firsthand look at the devastation.
Last month, Yudhoyono said that the extremist network might strike Jakarta during September or October. He said over the weekend that his warning was based on intelligence that the terrorists had already prepared the explosives.
Nobody claimed responsibility for Saturday night's coordinated attacks on two packed seafood cafes in the Jimbaran beach resort and the Raja Cafe in the bustling tourist centre of Kuta, where bombers struck nightclubs in 2002.
Video footage captured one of the suspected bombers walking determinedly past local and foreign tourists who were eating dinner, sipping drinks and chatting at candlelit tables at a noodle-and-steak restaurant in Kuta.
He clutches his backpack, adjusts it slightly, and then disappears from the screen. Moments later there is a large blast, followed by gray smoke and the sound of terrified screams. Police said the video, shot by a tourist and obtained by Associated Press Television News, was part of their investigation.
Suspicion immediately fell on the Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah (JI), whose members were convicted of the Bali attacks in 2002, and attacks on the JW Marriott hotel and the Australian Embassy, which together killed 22.
Scores of JI suspects have been arrested in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand since 2002, leading some officials to say the group's leadership has been crippled. But analysts say it appears to have taken on a different form, working with recruits from other organisations.
Twelve Indonesians, up to four Australian and one Japanese man were among the 26 people killed. Officials were trying to identify the nationalities of the other corpses in the morgue, a hospital statement said.
The 101 wounded included 49 Indonesians, up to 20 Australians, six Americans, six Koreans, four Japanese, officials said.
Bobby Nugroho, an Indonesian whose mother and father were killed, went to collect his parents' remains at the hospital's morgue.
"A witness said that my father was sitting facing the beach when a man opened his jacket and pulled the trigger in front of him," said Nugroho, a Jakarta-based reporter in his late 20s who works for the Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizan Shimbun.
Officials said remains of three bombers indicated they had carried explosives around their waists. It was not clear if they were included in the official death toll.
"I have seen them," Major General Mbai said.
"All that is left is their head and feet."
Saturday's attacks threaten to ruin a tourist boom on the mostly Hindu island, where hotels and restaurants have in the last 18 months reported that business had exceeded pre-2002 levels. Some say it may take even longer to recover a second time around.
Veli-Matti Enqvist, 51, had been scheduled to leave Wednesday with his wife, but was one of hundreds of tourists waiting for flights at the airport.
"We finally found something ... we're going," he said.
Like 2002, the bombings took place on the busiest night of the week, just as crowds began to swell.
The head waiter at the Menega Cafe in Jimbaran said the bomb went off at his beachside restaurant between the tables of two large dinner parties. Most of the 120 diners at the restaurant were Indonesian, he said.
"Everyone started screaming 'Allah, Allah, help!'," said Wayan Subagia, 23, who escaped with leg injuries.
"One woman rushed to pick up her child but the little girl was already dead."
Near-simultaneous blasts went off at the nearby Nyoman seafood restaurant and Kuta's Raja restaurant, five kilometres away.
For months intelligence officials had received information about a terrorist attack like the latest Bali bombing - but the plot's details were not uncovered in time to thwart it, security officials said.
"The fact that there's going to be an attack was known to the intelligence community," said Ric Blancaflor, executive director of a Philippine anti-terrorism task force.
"The problem always is how to get the exact details, like where."
- AP, with Mark Forbes
Taken from The Age
No comments:
Post a Comment