Australia joins hunt for Bali bombers

Canberra

In a speech to Parliament, Mr Howard said Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Justice Minister Chris Ellison would fly to Bali late yesterday.

“The word terrorism is too antiseptic an expression to describe what happened”, a sombre but angry Mr Howard told a special sitting of Parliament.

“It is too technical, too formal. What happened was barbaric, brutal mass murder without justification.”

He also warned that many of the nearly 200 confirmed dead in the blast would be Australians. By yesterday afternoon, the Australian death toll stood at 14.

Another 110 Australians were injured and almost 220 were unaccounted for after a car bomb ripped through the Sari Club in the beachside resort town of Kuta on Saturday night.

New South Wales state premier Bob Carr said he would ask the Federal government for military protection of likely terrorist targets in his state and its capital, Sydney, the nation’s most populous and wealthy city.

“If you are looking at targets in Australia, sites in Sydney would have to be considered when you are putting forward plans for greater security,” he said.

Mr Howard said next Sunday would be a national day of mourning for the victims.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said an al-Qaida-linked terror group, Jemaah Islamiyah, is the prime suspect in the bombing.

The group allegedly plotted last year a series of bomb attacks against the US, British and Australian embassies and other Western targets in Singapore.

According to US security officials, Jemaah Islamiyah resembles al-Qaida in its organisation and, like al-Qaida, operates across international boundaries. The group, which seeks to establish a pan-Islamic state in Southeast Asia, is believed to have cells in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Myanmar and Thailand.