New tactics and different devices used in Bali blasts: Aussie police
New tactics and different devices used in Bali blasts: Aussie police
Paul Tait, Reuters/Sydney
Australian police who joined their Indonesian counterparts in the
hunt for clues to Saturday's deadly blasts on the holiday island
of Bali said the bombers had used different devices to those
deployed in previous attacks.
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said on
Monday the smaller, coordinated series of blasts suggested new
tactics had been used in the apparent suicide bombings which
killed at least 22 people and wounded 125.
"What we're working with them on now is the actual make-up of
the bomb, they're quite a different bomb to the ones we have seen
being used before," Keelty told Nine Network television.
Hundreds of shaken Australian tourists returned to Sydney
aboard two of three special flights provided by national carrier
Qantas and many were interviewed by police after they landed.
Some who said they were close to the three blasts had their
clothes taken by police looking for clues.
"The federal police took my clothes because we hadn't taken
them off since then," Australian traveler Nathan Luies told
reporters. "They're going to do some forensic tests."
Australian police worked closely with Indonesia in the wake of
the huge Bali nightclub bombs in 2002 which killed 202 people,
including 88 Australians, and after the September 2004 bombing of
Australia's Jakarta embassy that killed 10 Indonesians.
A militant Southeast Asian group, Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), has
been blamed for those attacks, as well as the 2003 bombing of
Jakarta's JW Marriott hotel. Indonesian and Australian officials
have said the latest attacks bore the hallmarks of JI.
Australia offered help again after Saturday's blasts in packed
Bali restaurants, with federal police, medical teams and victim
identification experts sent within hours.
Two Australians, a 16-year-old boy and a 48-year-old woman,
have been confirmed dead but that toll was likely to double
because two Australians were still missing, Australian Foreign
Minister Alexander Downer said. Seventeen Australians were hurt.
"They have not been seen since and we think it's likely they
were killed and their bodies have not been identified," Downer
told the Nine Network.
Two Australian military C-130 transport planes took 17 injured
people, most of them Australians as well as Indonesians and one
Japanese national, to Darwin for emergency treatment.
Some had suffered horrific wounds from ball-bearings, nails
and glass packed into the bombs.
"The injuries are consistent with anti-personnel devices,
those sort of bombs that are designed to kill, maim and create
terror around them," Royal Darwin Hospital medical director Len
Notaras told Australian Broadcasting Corp television.
Ten people were later released from the hospital, which
treated more than 100 victims of the 2002 Bali blasts.
Some who returned to Sydney said they had heard of people
being warned by unidentified hotel security staff and bar workers
in Bali not to go out on Friday or Saturday night because of the
danger of an attack.
"On the Friday we were warned by them that there was going to
be an attack, that there was a high threat," tourist Andrew Peel
told reporters.
Those rumors would be investigated, Keelty said.
"We will obviously, with Indonesian national police, chase
that down but rumors and facts are quite different," he said.