'Bali bomb toll could have been much worse'
'Bali bomb toll could have been much worse'
Reuters, Sydney, Australia
Most of the chemicals used in Bali nightclub bombs that killed
202 people, including 88 Australians, burned instead of
exploding, thus limiting the death toll, Australian police said
on Wednesday.
Two bomb blasts tore through nightclubs packed with tourists
on the Indonesian island to Australia's north last Oct. 12 but
forensic experts believe the blasts could have been much worse.
Australian newspapers said all of about 500 people in two
nightclubs could have died if the main bomb, weighing 1.1 tonnes
and containing powdered TNT and other chemicals, had detonated
properly outside the Sari nightclub on Bali's Kuta tourist strip.
But Tim Morris, counter-terrorism manager for the Australian
Federal Police (AFP), said only about one-third of the bomb's
weight detonated, with the rest of the chemicals burning instead.
"If the bomb had exploded as planned then we suspect that
there would have been no survivors from the Sari club and the
immediate vicinity," Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper quoted
Morris as saying.
"Who knows what the final death toll could have been, but
easily around the 500 mark," he said.
AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty, who led an Australian team that
helped their Indonesian counterparts investigate the bombing, did
not dispute the report.
"When we did the reconstruction of the bomb...there is some
speculation that had the bomb been configured differently it
might have exploded differently," he told reporters in Sydney.
"But I think the issue we should be recognizing is that wasn't
the case and I'm not about to tell the bombers how to make a
better bomb," Keelty said.
Investigators have determined that two bombers died in the
blasts. One of them, Arnasan, died in the Sari blast.
The second, Iqbal, was wearing a vest filled with explosives
and died at the nearby Paddy's Bar.
The blasts, which police say were the work of al Qaeda-linked
Southeast Asian militant network Jamaah Islamiyah, rocked
Australia's traditional sense of security stemming largely from
its geographical isolation.