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Volunteers
post the names on a board at Denpasar hospital of those missing or
dead
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DENPASAR,
Indonesia, October 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Desperate
foreign and local families packed a cramped hospital morgue in the
capital of Indonesia's Bali island as staff struggled Monday to cope
with the horrific body count from Saturday's blast.
Employees
at Sanglah General Hospital morgue threaded their way carefully
through dozens of bundles wrapped in white cloth or plastic, which
contained the charred remains of victims, reported Agence
France-Presse (AFP).
In
a small room, volunteers had set up an information center to assist
people in locating relatives among some 180 blackened and mostly
unrecognizable bodies. Relatives clutched photographs or other items
of identification as they besieged the room. Others, accompanied by
volunteers, experienced the horror of checking some of the bundles to
try to find loved ones.
Employees
from the Bali health office moved from corpse to corpse injecting them
with formalin, a formaldehyde-based chemical that embalms whatever it
touches.
Others
placed recognizably intact corpses in yellow body bags and laid them
in rows in a hallway outside the morgue. Incomplete bodies and body
parts went into black bags.
Ice
blocks placed alongside the bundles on the floor were regularly
replaced, but as the sun rose higher on this tropical island, the
stench of decomposing flesh worsened and attracted swarms of flies.
"That
is about the only easy thing we can do to help preserve the bodies,
chill them with ice," as the morgue has only a few refrigerated
drawers, said Doctor Budi Sampurno.
"It
is not a question of a shortage of formalin, it is just that
everything is too chaotic at the moment and we have been unable to
properly inject every incoming body with it."
Bali
police chief Brigadier General Edi Setiawan said after meeting British
ambassador Richard Gozney that Britain would send containers of ice to
help preserve the bodies.
Gozney
said Britain would also send one or two policemen with forensic
experience to help identification.
"What
we are prioritizing now is the identification of the bodies," he
said.
At
least 190 people died in the blast. Only 29 have been identified so
far, the hospital said, including nine Indonesians and nine
Australians, five Singaporeans, two Britons and one each from France,
Germany, Ecuador and the Netherlands.
Only
the bodies of several Indonesians have been claimed by their families
so far, Sampurno said.
The
blast late Saturday ripped through two popular clubs in Kuta and
triggered a fire, razing a wide area in the heart of the tourist
district.
Meanwhile,
Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri came under mounting
pressure at home and abroad to clamp down on terrorism in the wake of
the devastating Bali bombing as stocks and the rupiah plummeted
Monday.
"What
is needed is that she shows some concrete agenda, some focus,"
said Afan Gaffar of the state Gajah Mada University in Yogyakarta.
Gaffar
said that despite repeated warnings from friendly neighboring
countries, the government had failed to anticipate the threat or even
acknowledge it.
"It
is a question of leadership, a question of fundamental trust in a
leader that is at stake," Gaffar told AFP.
He
called for the government to instill some long overdue order into its
intelligence agencies. Many, including Vice President Hamzah Haz, have
blamed the agencies for failing to anticipate the attack.
Australian
Prime Minister John Howard told parliament he was sending Foreign
Minister Alexander Downer, Justice Minister Chris Ellison and top
security officials for urgent talks with their Indonesian
counterparts.
"Their
mission will be to maximise cooperation between Australia and
Indonesia in pursuit of the murderers," Howard said.
The
EU's Danish presidency urged the "Indonesian authorities to spare
no efforts in finding and bringing to justice the perpetrators."
Australia
and the United States Monday led calls for Indonesia to confront the
menace of terrorism, as countries around the world expressed their
horror over the Bali car bomb attack.
Along
with the chorus of condemnation of Saturday's blast -- described as
"heinous" by U.S. President George W. Bush -- came offers of
help for Indonesia's swamped emergency services and condolences for
Australia which had scores of victims among the 190 dead.
The
U.S. president offered both intelligence from the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and medical assistance to close ally Australia.
He
said the world "must together challenge and defeat the idea that
the wanton killing of innocents advances any cause or supports any
aspirations."
"And
we must call this despicable act by its rightful name -- murder,"
a White House statement said.
The
U.S. State Department late Sunday urged all U.S. citizens in Indonesia
to leave the country and ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S.
government personnel from there.
The
department also warned U.S. citizens to defer travel to Indonesia. "The
bombing of a nightclub and another in the vicinity of our consular
agency in Bali, Indonesia, along with the current security situation
within Indonesia puts U.S. citizens and U.S. interests at risk,"
said a travel warning issued by the department.
The
State Department urged Americans who have to travel to or remain in
Indonesia to exercise maximum caution and take prudent measures such
as avoiding crowds and demonstrations and keeping a low profile.
It
also said U.S. citizens in Indonesia should avoid political
demonstrations that "can quickly turn violent."
"American
citizens are urged to treat mail and packages from unfamiliar sources
with suspicion," the warning said.
In
the first official reaction from Beijing came strong condemnation
Monday from foreign ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue.
"China
strongly condemns the violent explosions," she was quoted as
saying by the official Xinhua news agency. "China is deeply
concerned over the issue and reiterated that China has always been
opposed to terrorism of any forms," she said.
Asian
regional leaders were quick to blame terror for the attack.
"The
government of Pakistan strongly condemns the terrorist attack,"
said Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Kamran Niaz, while
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia condemned the "heinous act
of violence".
Condolences
came from South Korea, where President Kim Dae-Jung noted that
"terrorism cannot justify any moral causes," and from
Britain's Queen Elizabeth.
The
monarch sent a letter to Australia's prime minister expressing her
deep shock at "the horrific outrage in Bali with so many
Australians amongst the dead, injured and unaccounted for."
UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan was "shocked and horrified" to
hear of the attack, a statement from his spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
The
secretary general sought to express "his utter condemnation of
all such indiscriminate attacks on civilians. They violate all
accepted standards of morality, as well as national and international
law, and cannot be justified by any cause or ideology."
From
across Europe came outrage, with the European Union, through current
president Denmark, calling the attack "barbaric and
heinous".
