'Most-wanted men planned Bali blasts'

The two most wanted men in south-east Asia are believed to have masterminded the suicide bombings at three crowded restaurants on the Indonesian tourist resort island of Bali, officials said today.

Twenty-six people were killed in the blasts and dozens more were injured.

The al Qaida-linked Malaysian fugitives who were allegedly behind twin nightclub bombings on Bali in 2002, and two other attacks in the capital Jakarta in 2003 and 2004, appear to have struck again, said Major General Ansyaad Mbai, a top Indonesian anti-terror official.

“The modus operandi of Saturday’s attacks is the same,” he said, identifying the two as Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohamed Top.

They were not among the three bombers, whose dismembered remains were found at the scene, police said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono warned that terrorists could be planning more strikes.

“The terrorists are still looking for soft targets,” he said at a press conference after visiting the scene of the bombings.

He said Indonesia will do everything it can to prevent another strike.

No-one claimed responsibility for the latest co-ordinated attacks on two packed seafood cafes in the Jimbaran beach resort and a three-storey restaurant in downtown Kuta.

But suspicion immediately fell on terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, whose members were convicted of the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people.

“The fact that there was going to be an attack was known to the intelligence community,” said Ric Blancaflor, executive director of a Philippine anti-terrorism task force. “The problem always is how to get the exact details, like where.”

Video footage of one of the blasts showed groups of tourists, many apparently Westerners, seated at candle-lit tables talking and sipping drinks seconds before the explosion.

The head waiter at the Menega Café said the bomb went off at his beachside restaurant between the tables of two large dinner parties, who were sitting in the sand. Most of the 120 diners at the restaurant were Indonesian, he said.

“Everyone started screaming “Allah, Allah, help!” said Wayan Subagia, 23, who escaped with injuries to his leg. ”One woman rushed to pick up her child but the little girl was already dead.”

Minutes later he heard another blast at the nearby Nyoman seafood restaurant.

At about the same time, three miles away in Kuta, a bomb exploded at the Raja restaurant in a bustling outdoor shopping centre.

The bomb apparently went off on the restaurant’s second floor.

Bali police chief Major General Mangku Pastika said investigators have found traces of TNT and three heads that appear to belong to the suicide bombers.

“I have seen them,” said Maj Gen Mbai. “All that is left is their head and feet. By the evidence we can conclude the bombers were carrying the explosives around their waists.”

It was not immediately clear whether the three suicide bombers were included in the death toll which, according to Sanglah Hospital spokesman Putu Putra Wisada, climbed to 26 today.

An Australian and a Japanese man were among those killed, along with at least 12 Indonesians.

Officials were trying to identify the nationalities of the other corpses in the morgue, a hospital statement said.

The 101 wounded included 49 Indonesians, 17 Australians, six Americans, six Koreans, four Japanese, officials said.

Dozens of people, most of them Indonesian, waited in tears outside the morgue in Sanglah Hospital, near the island’s capital city, Denpasar, for news of friends and relatives missing since the attacks. Several coffins were carried out, one of them for a child.