Posted on 10/03/2005 10:28:34 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The only Americans known to have been injured in the Indonesia suicide bombings were members of a Bay Area family who had just sat down for dinner when an explosion tore through the busy restaurant.
Soviana Suprato Ly and five members of her family were on the first floor of the three-story Raja Cafe noodle and steakhouse, in the bustling tourist center of Kuta, when a bomb went off on the floor above them Saturday night.
Ly said she heard a thunderous boom followed by an eerie silence. "Everything turned black, and I could hear nothing and I could see nobody," she told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Ly said she immediately tried locating her father, brother, husband and two sons in the thick smoke.
"I was screaming for my baby, then I saw my husband carrying my baby out," she said in a phone interview from a Bali hospital, where she and family members were recovering from their injuries.
Near-simultaneous bombs also went off at two packed seafood cafes in the Jimbaran beach resort. The death toll from the attacks, which Indonesian authorities suspect were connected to the al-Qaida-linked Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, has varied between 19 and 29, according to officials. More than 100 were injured.
The Suprato family was in Jakarta earlier in the week to attend a wedding and had gone to Bali for a short vacation, said Titievi Suprato, Ly's mother who stayed behind in San Francisco.
Ly's father, 70-year-old Jusos Suprato, and her 56-year-old Indonesian uncle who was with them, suffered the most severe injuries when wood and debris fell on top of them. The family planned to move Jusos Suprato to a hospital in Jakarta on Monday so doctors could remove small pieces of debris that remained in his body.
Ly, her brother, Richard Suprato; her husband, Duke Ly; and her sons, 16-year-old Sean and 4-year-old Jeremy, all escaped with minor cuts and bruises.
"We were very lucky none of us got hardly any injuries at all," Ly said. "We are all OK."
Most of the family planned to return to San Francisco in a few days, but Jusos Suprato's injuries likely will force him to stay in Indonesia for several more weeks, Titievi Suprato said.
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