What they had to say

October 14 2002

There are many Australians unaccounted for, many. We must therefore prepare ourselves as a nation for the possibility of a significant number of Australian deaths amongst the fatalities.
JOHN HOWARD, Prime Minister

All of a sudden there was just a loud explosion, and the roof, the ceiling collapsed in on me and it really went dark.
RICK ELLIOTT, of Melbourne

This bombing is a warning to all of us that terrorism is a real danger and potential threat to national security.

If you look at the number of victims, this was indiscriminate and there is indeed a possibility this was terrorism.
DAI BACHTIAR,Indonesian police chief

RICHARD POORE, New Zealand TV director

The Sari club is gone. You can smell the bodies of those who died.
A Balinese photographer

It's difficult to identify people because they have been completely charred.
A Balinese police officer

People said that Bali is the safest place for tourists but I can't rely on that any more.
JEPPE LINDQVIST, Swedish surfer

I saw people on fire. Many people were carrying others. Most were bleeding. Everything was on fire. It was chaos. There were bodies all over the floor of the bar.

It's nothing quite like anything I've ever seen. There was more blood, the smell of burnt skin and the pain that they were in, you can't really put that into words.
MARTIN LYONS, of Melbourne

Some poor bugger was laying right on the corner and one of his legs was gone. He was just saying . . . 'what's going to happen to me?'
BRUCE BAKER, of the Gold Coast

There's people that we were sitting around the pool with yesterday that haven't ever come back. They were going to the Sari Club, but they just haven't come back. It's a war scene there, I mean I've never seen war but you can just imagine that's what it looks like, it's just unbelievable.
LISA McDONALD, of Sydney

I can't really liken it to anything I've ever heard before, but certainly it just caused chaos once the second explosion had gone off. It was just like a war zone. People going everywhere, you know just disoriented, and certainly the scene wasn't pretty in terms of people dead on the ground.
STEVEN FEBEY, Melbourne footballer

I've been to the hospital and I've seen gruesome sights, unbelievable really. It's like a bloody war movie. I've actually seen a bloke and he looked like a bit of wood, that's how burnt he was.
SIMON QUAYLE, coach of Perth's Kingsley football club

When we walked into the morgue it was like walking into a horror movie - unimaginable.

It felt like going home but never again, we won't be coming back after this.
SUE McKERROW, of Melbourne whose family was on their sixth trip to Bali


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