Tears and hugs greet Bali survivors in Australian cities
Tears and hugs greet Bali survivors in Australian cities
Michael Christie, Reuters, Sydney, Australia
Bedraggled and tearful Australian survivors of a bomb attack in an Indonesia resort flew home on Monday to anxious relatives while the more seriously wounded were evacuated to hospitals across Australia on special flights.
From the crack of dawn, relatives and friends packed airport arrival halls to greet holidaymakers caught up in the car bomb explosion on the holiday island of Bali in which more than 180 people were killed and more tan 300 wounded.
"It was like a war broke out. It was just fear," Leigh McGrath, 22, told reporters at Sydney airport as up to 1,300 people were due to arrive in Australia's main city.
"I don't think there will be many people going back to Bali."
Fringed with idyllic beaches and catering to all types with luxury resorts for big spenders and dirt-cheap hostels for young backpackers and surfers, Bali is a favorite holiday destination for hundreds of thousands of Australians every year.
While the government said there was no evidence the late Saturday bomb attack on a packed strip of bars at Kuta Beach was aimed at Australians, the suspected religious militant attackers must have known that most of the revelers would have been Australian.
"I really believe whoever did this made a concerted effort to hit at the heart of Australia because that's where our kids play," Robyn Thompsett told the Australian Associated Press news agency as she arrived in the Western Australian city of Perth.
In Sydney, weeping friends and relatives comforted each other while they waited nervously for the first plane load of evacuees.
Many returning vacationers, clutching children, surfboards or souvenirs, appeared shocked and burst into tears as they threw themselves into waiting arms.
A few, their legs slashed by glass or shrapnel, or with broken bones or burns, were rolled out on wheelchairs while the seriously injured were carried into ambulances on the tarmac and whisked off to hospitals.
One Australian died during a three-hour flight to Darwin in a Royal Australian Air Force transport plane.
Australian Federal Police issued questionnaires to all arriving passengers and interviewed any who had witnessed the bombing, which tore through the popular Sari Club nightspot in Kuta.
"Kaboom and there were arms and legs everywhere," said survivor Glen Dubois, a thick bandage covering a damaged eye.
"I blacked out. When I came to, I said to myself 'jump up, jump up' and I managed to throw around five or six bodies off me. Everyone around me was dead."
Many of the Australians drinking and dancing in the Sari were Australian football players.
Around the country, clubs mourned and waited for news.
Stephanie Page, girlfriend of Geelong football club player Paul Chapman, told reporters at Melbourne airport that he and his teammates had been thinking about going to the Sari.
"Then they felt the ground shake, and could smell the smoke and burned flesh," Page said, waiting for Chapman to return. "He said he was scared and distressed. He said it was a mini-Sept. 11."
Shell-shocked Australia declared on Monday Oct. 20 a national day of mourning, as it began counting its dead from bomb blasts in Indonesia that brought the "war on terrorism" into its own backyard.
Embarking on a review of security across the nation, Prime Minister John Howard said there was little doubt that terrorists were behind the Bali bombing that killed at least 183 people.