Bali Update

Oct. 3 - Tim Blair deals with rumours and some accounts that dispute the official story that the three bombs that hit two restaurants in Bali were the work of homicide bombers as well as the persistent rumours that other bombs failed to detonate by remote because the phone service went down after the initial bombs went off.

It appears that Indonesians (probably Balinese) were the largest number of casualties. CNN reports 21 dead and at least 132 wounded:

The latest attacks killed at least two Australians, one Japanese and four or five other foreigners whose nationalities have not been determined, hospital officials said. The other victims were Indonesian.

Earlier reports put the death toll higher because body parts were entering the morgue in separate body bags, police said.

Among the wounded are 68 Indonesians, 20 Australians, six Koreans, four Americans and four Japanese, with five others unidentified, according to Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari.

Two of the three chief suspects are Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohamed. They are Malaysians and believed to be al Qaeda operatives. The CNN account is somewhat understated; bin Husin and Mohamed are both wanted in connection with the Jakarta attacks of 2003 and 2004, as well as for their part in the 2002 Bali attack:

Syaiful Bahri, alias Apuy, was sentenced for helping the fugitive masterminds behind the attack make their bomb.
The blast, in September last year, killed 10 innocent people and the suicide bomber.

Judge Sucahyo Padmo said Bahri, 26, was guilty of "providing assistance" to Malaysians Azahari Husin and Noordin Top, who are both wanted over the September 9 attack.

Bahri helped purchase potassium used to make the two-tonne truck bomb that exploded outside the heavily-fortified mission and helped master bombmaker Azahari mix the chemicals into an explosive cocktail.

The judges said he also helped hide Azahari and Noordin, who have managed to evade police despite a three-year manhunt launched after the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people - including 88 Australians.

The pair are also blamed for the 2003 blast that ripped apart Jakarta's JWMarriott hotel, killing 12.

There is something sinister about those who travel about Indonesia and other hot spots building bombs and persuading others to lash on those bombs to blow up themselves along with people eating in restaurants or nightclubbing. Calling them "terrorist enablers" is accurate but makes them sound like a group designed for a wearying number of papers submitted to psychology associations; the words I prefer are not appropriate for a blog my parents read but in their own way are more satisfying.

I'm not as angry as I was Saturday but that's not to say that I'm calmer. Bali is a beautiful island and the ideal target for Islamist extremists. The tourism industry is vital to the island's economy, which was only beginning to recover after the devastating attack of October 12, 2002, and most of the inhabitants are polytheist Hindus or Buddhists and seen as an impediment to Jemaah Islamiyah's stated goal of turning Indonesia into a strict Muslim state. If the intent of the terrorists is to isolate and impoverish Bali they may have finally succeeded.

We in North American don't pay enough attention to the Western theatre of the war on terror (fortunately, the Australians do.) Maybe this latest terror attack will get the public's attention and events in Malaysia, Thailand, the Phillippines and Indonesia will be placed in context in this worldwide war on terror.

Posted by: Debbye at 09:16 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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