Just days before the three year anniversary of the first Bali bombing in 2002, a coordianted set of three bombs killed atleast 25 people, and wounded over 100 people. It's unknown if suicide bombers were involved. Among the wounded were 49 Indonesians, 17 Australians, 6 Koreans, 3 Japanese and 2 Americans, according to officials at Sanglah Hospital near Denpasar, the capital of Bali.
Among the places hit were a crowded restaurant outside the Four Seasons hotel at Jimbaran beach, and a shopping square in Kuta, not far from the terrorist bombing that killed 202 people in October 2002. The bombings occured within three miles of each other during suppertime Saturday.
This occured as the tourism business, was starting to pickup, after the last bombing and SARS scare.
The authorities would not speculate about who was behind the attacks, but immediate suspicion fell on Jemaah Islamiyah, a radical Islamic terrorist group in Indonesia that has been behind other major attacks, including the 2002 bombings. Indonesia has the largest Islamic population in the world. It is a country where the majority of people are secular minded.
This attack needs condemnation, not rationalization. Islam is in a civil war of clerical fascists against secular forces.
RENEGADE EYE
1 comment:
It is imperative that both the Western world and the Islamic World stop presenting their most extreme aspects and find a common ground to begin some type of dialogue. I think civil war accurately describes what's going on with Muslims. And, who's to say that in a not-too-far distant future our own religious extremists don't heat up our American cold war? Condemnation, yes. But, I think even coming from fellow Muslims it will fall on he deaf ears of the extremists. In part because they ARE extremists and in part because so many Muslims have been killed in recent years by the West. Just as it would be hard to stop a Pat Robertson assassination agenda if it was legitimized and implemented, so it must be difficult for politically moderate Muslims to call for a halt to the violence. It still must be done, it's simply not a day's work.
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