New tactics used in Bali blasts--Australia police

New tactics used in Bali blasts--Australia 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 more than 100.

"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.