The Bali bombings

The Bali bombings

This time it was not clubbers enjoying themselves at a nightspot that attracted the murderous anger of the zealots.

This time the people whose conduct rendered them culpable enough to be slaughtered and maimed at random were holidaying families eating dinner at restaurants. But as with the first Bali bombing three years ago almost to the day, though Westerners were probably the target and were certainly killed and wounded, the main victims of the attack were and will be Indonesian. The death toll will no doubt rise -- the world's weary experience of this type of mindless violence teaches us as much -- but at present, of the dead who have been identified, Indonesians form the overwhelming majority. The wounded, too, are mostly Indonesian. And all Indonesians who were untouched by the bombs, in Bali and elsewhere in the archipelago, now face yet another economic downturn as foreign tourists leave the country early, or cancel planned holidays, and foreign firms reassess plans to invest in Indonesia. -- The Sydney Morning Herald