BALI (Indonesia), Oct 2: Suicide bombers were behind the three attacks in Bali which killed as many as 26 people and wounded 122, the island’s police chief said on Sunday.
Investigators released chilling footage captured on amateur video of a man in a black shirt and jeans, with what looks like a hump on his back, strolling into a restaurant among diners on the resort island and then exploding.
Three separate bombs tore through restaurants packed with Saturday evening diners, many of them foreign tourists. Two were at outdoor seafood eateries on Jimbaran Beach and one at a steak bar at Kuta Beach, an area surrounded by popular shops.
The attacks were the latest of a series of bomb blasts in Indonesia in recent years. Several have been against Western targets, hurting tourism and raising fears among investors about security in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
The nearly simultaneous explosions came almost three years after Al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah (JI) militants bombed nightclubs in Bali, killing 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.
“We have reached a conclusion that they were suicide bombings,” Made Mangku Pastika told a news conference.
“There is evidence that the explosive materials were attached to the body,” the police chief said, adding that the composition of the bombs included TNT and metal slugs.
“There are pieces from either a jacket or a bag that were attached to the bodies. The pieces from their torsos spattered to all directions.”—Reuters
