Manuela flown to S'pore for treatment

Leony Aurora and Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta/Tangerang

A five-year-old girl who was critically injured in the Australian Embassy blast was flown to Singapore on Friday to receive specialist treatment.

Elisabeth Manuela Bambina Musu's chances of full recovery were "quite high", said Charles van Reenan, a medical director with SOS International that conducted the evacuation, as quoted by The Associated Press.

Manuela had two large pieces of shrapnel removed from her abdomen at the Metropolitan Medical Centre (MMC) Hospital in South Jakarta, where she was treated initially.

Separately, officials said 38 of 182 injured victims were reported to have been discharged from hospitals across the capital.

Manuela and her mother, Maria Eva Komalawati, were queuing at the embassy to pick up her new Australian passport when the bomb went off. Eva died instantly, along with eight others.

Manuela's uncle, Budi Anto, said the girl had regained consciousness and kept asking for her mother. "She hasn't been told about her mother yet."

Budi said the family had preferred to keep Manuela in the capital, so that her father, Emanuel Musu -- an Italian -- could see Eva and visit his daughter on the same day.

As of Friday afternoon, Eva's body was laid out in an open casket at a sister's home in Curug, Tangerang, where relatives and friends came to pay their last respects.

"We haven't decided whether she will be buried here or in Italy," Eva's eldest sister Christina Emidawati, 42, told The Jakarta Post. "We're waiting for the arrival of her husband from Italy at 10 p.m."

However, some confusion exists in regards Manuela's parentage.

According to the family, Eva, the youngest of six children, was working as a tourist guide in Bali when she met Emanuel, and the two were wed in Italy in 1998 and had lived there since.

The Australian government, however, claimed that Manuela was the daughter of David Norman, a policeman in suburban Sydney, and was granted Australian citizenship on Sept. 1.

In a statement issued by the New South Wales State Police, Norman said he was traveling to Singapore to be with his daughter, whom he affectionately called "Manny".

Eva's family has remained firm that Emanuel is the biological father of Manuela and that she is an Italian citizen.

Katarina, another sister, said Eva came home to Indonesia for an extended holiday two months ago. "Emanuel was going to pick them up next February," she said.