Bali blasts target tourist areas
12:48 AM October 2 Up to four explosions rocked popular tourist areas on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on Saturday, killing at least 12 people.
A hospital official said at least 35 wounded foreigners were taken to the main hospital on Bali.
At least three people died in one of the blasts in the Kuta beach area, police on the scene said.
One witness told El Shinta radio that there were at least 30 casualties at another blast in the Jimbaran Beach area, although he did not say if any victims were dead.
One hospital said at least 40 injured people had been brought in.
"People were running for their lives. Foreign tourists were wounded. I am so scared," Yosi, 24, a shop owner near the Kuta blast, said.
Daniel Martin, a tourist in Bali, says there was chaos after the blast in Kuta Square.
"There was thick smoke for a few minutes afterwards but there didn't seem to be any fire," he said.
"People were clambering onto the roof of the restaurant. It's about a three storey building so people were climbing out and screaming and jumping down to the street.
"It was pretty harrowing stuff."
A separate police official at the island's headquarters said he could confirm two explosions, one in Kuta and the other at a cafe on Jimbaran beach.
Local Metro TV said there were two blasts at Jimbaran and two at Kuta. It quoted witnesses who said one of the Jimbaran explosions was near the Four Seasons Hotel.
One of the Kuta blasts caused widespread damage to nearby shops and restaurants, witnesses said.
"I don't know about the number of victims or casualties. We're still busy collecting data," police official Suwita said.
Phonelines between Bali and other parts of the country were overloaded, as people struggled to contact friends and relatives in the area.
Peter Holden of Gosford on the central coast of New South Wales says he received an SMS message from his daughter Donna, who lives in Bali, telling him about the explosions.
Mr Holden says his daughter has reported several fatalities.
"There have been at least two bombs gone off in Jimbaran in restaurants and those kind of restaurants are restaurants populated by tourists in the main," Mr Holden said.
"And then a more recent report just a moment ago that there's also reports of another bomb in Kuta Square. That's a pretty busy tourist area," he said.
The blasts come almost exactly three years since two nightclubs were bombed in Bali's famous Kuta Beach in October 2002, killing 202 people, including 88 Australians. President condemns blasts
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has condemned the Bali blasts as a criminal act.
His spokesman says he is heading to the island.
An Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Marty Natalegawa, says the Indonesian Government has remained on a high state of alert for any such attacks.
"Enhancement of security is done but their people they just need to be lucky once and they can force the kind of havoc that is potentially before us just now," he said.
"Again if anything, this latest episode illustrated that the threat of terror is very much with us not only in Indonesia but elsewhere in the world and we must not succumb." Source: Reuters
