25 are killed, 100 hurt as blasts hit Bali

KUTA, Indonesia -- Three bomb blasts ripped through restaurants on the resort island of Bali during the dinner rush last night, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 100 others, officials said.

Two of the nearly simultaneous attacks, which some investigators attributed to a group that has been linked to Al Qaeda, targeted a row of popular seafood eateries along the beach of Jimbaran Bay.

A third explosion rocked the main tourist hub of Kuta Beach, nearly 20 miles away, blowing out the second floor of a steakhouse and a bar popular with foreigners, overturning furniture and spattering the floor with blood.

The blast shattered the window of a clothing store in a crowded market of surfer shops, film processing outlets, and boutiques that welcome streams of foreign visitors.

Two Americans were among the wounded, authorities said.

Major General Ansyaad Mbai, one of Indonesia's top antiterrorism officials, said three attackers went into the restaurants wearing explosive vests around their waists.

''It was a chaotic situation, panic. People were running," said police Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf, who arrived outside the Raja restaurant in the open-air Kuta Square shopping district shortly after the blast. Within moments, the dead were being hauled from the scene, he said, adding that he saw at least eight corpses.

The blasts marked the return of extremist violence to Bali, almost three years after explosions devastated a pair of Kuta nightclubs on another sultry Saturday night, killing 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.

Those attacks, on Oct. 12, 2002, were the worst acts of terrorism in the country's history. They roused the government out of its denial that Muslim militants with global connections were plotting to make Indonesia a major battlefront.

Since then, Indonesian security forces have moved aggressively against Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional network implicated in other terrorist bombings. Dozens of members have been jailed in connection with the nightclub bombings, and four suspected ringleaders have been sentenced to death.

But those intelligence and law enforcement efforts, which have received substantial US and Australian assistance, have failed to stem attacks on Western targets that have occurred steadily once a year.

As dawn broke today over Bali, a largely Hindu outpost in an overwhelmingly Muslim country, investigators were picking through the wreckage while police held back a small crowd of Indonesians and foreigners. Captain Sunarta, a member of the local bomb squad, said bits of detonated explosives, retrieved from the ground floor of the three-story restaurants, were being analyzed at a police laboratory.

Sayid Hasan, a taxi driver in Kuta, said he was furious that terrorist attacks, which devastated Bali's tourism-dependent economy three years ago, had returned to his island.

''Bali has not done anything wrong. Why is Bali always the target?" Hasan asked. ''I can't understand how a bomb could happen again in Bali. The security is tight. Police are everywhere. How could they do it?"

Hasan said he had initially mistaken the Kuta blast for an accidental explosion at a power plant. He began to worry when the electricity stayed on. ''This is evil," he said. ''How come these people keep bombing Bali?"

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who in late August called for heightened vigilance amid concerns that militants were in the final stage of plotting a strike in Indonesia, labeled the bombings acts of indiscriminate terrorism.

''We will hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice," he said in televised remarks. The president dispatched top security officials to Bali and said he would travel there himself today.

Yudhoyono and other top officials said it was too early to lay blame for the attacks. But investigators said they suspected the involvement of Jemaah Islamiyah.

In 2003, militants belonging to Jemaah Islamiyah detonated a car bomb in front of the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, then carried out a similar attack a year later at the gate of the Australian Embassy, which is nearby. A total of 23 people, mainly Indonesians, were killed in the two attacks.

Those suspected of being the masterminds of those bombings, Azahari Husin and Noordin Mohammed Top, both Malaysians, have eluded an extensive dragnet. Indonesian intelligence officials say they believe the two are still in Indonesia.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla acknowledged that Jemaah Islamiyah remained active in Indonesia, but said the group's strength was not known. ''We are seeing many terrorist attacks. It means they are networking. They are there, networking in this country," Kalla said in an interview with the BBC.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined other international leaders in condemning the attacks in Jimbaran Bay and Kuta Beach.

''The United States stands with the people and government of Indonesia as they work to bring to justice those responsible for these acts of terrorism. We will continue to work together in our common fight against terror," she said in an e-mailed statement.

Employees of the Four Seasons Hotel in Jimbaran heard two explosions at 8 p.m. coming from the row of restaurants, about a quarter-mile away, said Putu Indrawati, the hotel's public relations director.

''The island has been crowded for the last two months, and these restaurants definitely would have been crowded," she said.

More then a dozen casual restaurants line the beach, which are popular with tourists who choose their own fish and then eat under the stars while being serenaded by strolling musicians playing Western standards.

The Graha Asri Hospital morgue near Kuta Square received 11 fatalities: a Korean, an Australian, and the rest Indonesian, according to Anto, a paramedic.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.