This Day in History | 2005 Bombs rip through Bali restaurants

Azahari Bin Husin (left) and Noordin Mohamed Top (right)

Three bomb attacks in two tourist areas on the Indonesian resort island of Bali have killed at least 26 people – among them foreign nationals.

More than 50 others were injured as blasts ripped through three restaurants – two in the Jimbaran beach resort, the third in Kuta 30 kilometers away.

Indonesia’s president said terrorists were to blame for the bombings, the second time terrorists had struck in three years.

Bombings in Kuta in 2002 killed 202 people, many of them foreign tourists. Local TV has been showing pictures of bloodied and confused survivors and collapsed buildings.

Local media said police had found a number of other unexploded devices. No group has admitted carrying out the attacks.

However, BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the finger of suspicion is already pointing towards the extremist regional group Jemaah Islamiah (JI) which was blamed for the 2002 bombings.

Courtesy BBC News

In context

The final number of those killed in the bomb attacks was 19 as well as three suicide bombers.

The following day Indonesia’s counter-terrorism chief, Major General Ansyaad Mbai, named two Malaysians – Azahari Bin Husin and Noordin Mohamed Top – as the suspected masterminds of the 2005 suicide attacks.

Azahari was killed in a police raid in November 2005. Noordin is still on the run.

Both were believed to be top leaders of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the shadowy group said to have links with al-Qaeda.