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© St. Petersburg Times, published October 21, 2002
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Authorities are making progress in the investigation of a bombing in Bali that killed nearly 200 people, with investigators now concluding that three, not two, explosives were used in the attack, police said Sunday.
It was not immediately known how they arrived at that conclusion.
Gen. Edward Aritonang, a national police spokesman, also said authorities believed there was no link between a grenade blast near the office of the honorary U.S. consul around the time of the Bali nightclub attack.
Meanwhile, authorities considered how to interrogate Abu Bakar Bashir, the ailing spiritual leader of a group suspected of carrying out the Oct. 12 nightclub attack, as about 100 Islamic students protested outside a hospital to prevent police from removing him.
Police monitored the protest but did not intervene.
Bashir, 64, a cleric who runs an Islamic school, was arrested Saturday on suspicion of involvement in a series of church bombings two years ago. He is the spiritual leader of Jemaa Islamiyah.
Bashir was being treated for breathing problems and could be released in two or three days, doctors said.
ZAMBOANGA, Philippines -- A bomb on a parked bicycle exploded near a crowded Roman Catholic shrine Sunday in the southern Philippines, killing a soldier and injuring 18 people. It was the fifth bombing this month.
The blast demolished stalls selling food, candles and other religious items outside the historical site of Fort Pilar in Zamboanga, a predominantly Christian port city about 530 miles south of Manila.
KABUL, Afghanistan -- A U.N. human rights expert visited an area in northern Afghanistan Sunday where local officials this month discovered mass graves containing the bodies of hundreds of people allegedly killed by the former Taliban regime, officials said.
Asma Jahangir, an independent expert with the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, was in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif to meet local officials, said U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva.
Jahangir is on a 10-day mission in Afghanistan to report on extrajudicial and summary executions throughout the war-battered country.
The Pakistani lawyer and human rights activist will present her findings to the Geneva-based commission.
EXPLOSIVES BELT FOUND: Police found an explosives belt at the home of three Egyptians arrested earlier this month on suspicion they were plotting an attack on an American military cemetery in Nettuno near Rome, news reports said Sunday. The ANSA news agency, quoting unidentified officials, said investigators discovered the leather belt during a second search of the apartment in Anzio.
U.S. SHIP IN YEMEN: A U.S. cargo ship docked in Aden port on Sunday, the first American vessel to enter the southern Yemeni Red Sea port since the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. The official Yemeni news agency reported the ship carried 25,000 tons of American wheat as a donation to the impoverished country.