'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.