Saturday night, Oct 12, 2002.

At Paddy’s, a man walked in carrying a backpack. Unknown to the crowd around him, it contained 1kg of explosives.

Shortly after 11pm, he detonated the bomb, unleashing a ball of fire that killed several people instantly and sent others rushing out of Paddy’s.

They fled straight into the impact of a second, more powerful bomb that went off seconds later outside.

A second attacker, driving by the crowded Sari nightclub less than 40m away, detonated hundreds of kilogrammes of explosives in his white Mitsubishi van.

The second blast completely decimated Sari Club and levelled the parking building in front of the club.

In all, 202 people were killed in the twin bombings, the deadliest terrorist attack in Indonesia’s history.

At least 300 more people were injured.

I Dewa Ketut Widia Putra was in his car, stuck in traffic, less than 20m from the Sari Club explosion.

The shock wave lifted his car off the ground and knocked him unconscious.

His face and body were covered in blood as well as shards of glass from the broken windshield.

Putra suffered severe burns on his left arm and chest. He had to undergo an operation on his left eye. It took him months to recover. But even then, he had lost 20 per cent of his eyesight in his left eye.

Putra’s colleague, Thiolina Marpaung, was in the back seat of his car. Her injuries were far worse.

The wave of shrapnel and shards of glass damaged both her eyes so badly that she could not see anything for days.

She spent the next six years in and out of hospitals. She also had to undergo multiple surgeries in Indonesia and Australia. Even then, she could only regain a fraction of her eyesight.

“My eyes cannot focus correctly and quickly. The alignment is also off. I cannot cope with sudden changes in light."

“There were many people at the bar,” said Jatmiko Bambang Supeno, Sari Club’s assistant manager at the time.

First responders remember hearing explosions from vehicles’ fuel tanks, intensifying the fire even further.

“I can never forget that night.
(I remember) the sound of people crying and screaming ‘Help me! Help me!’,” said Agus Bambang Priyanto, who was a Red Cross volunteer at the time.

With Legian still in flames, they were able only to tend to those who had made it out of the raging fire.

It was 2am by the time firefighters managed to contain the blaze.

“Some of the dead were completely burned beyond recognition,” Priyanto said.

6km away, at Sanglah General Hospital, medical workers were swamped with hundreds of incoming patients.

“The emergency unit was like a market. In 20 minutes, we were running out of intravenous fluids because there were so many patients,” said I Gusti Lanang Made Rudiartha, director of the hospital at the time.

“My morgue could only fit 10 bodies. So there were body bags lying in our hallways. We had so many patients to care for, we only had time to think about what to do with (the bodies) the following day.”

Some of the bodies were so charred, it took forensic teams six months before they managed to identify all 202 victims.

Widow Nyoman Rencini said it took three months before the body of her husband, Ketut Sumerawat, was identified through DNA matching.

The family rushed to Sanglah hospital to see the remains.

“My husband was a tall and strong man. But I saw his body hunched up like a dog inside a body bag. I couldn’t recognise him."

“I was lost for words. I was speechless when I saw such (horrific) sight. All I could do was cry. Why did my husband have to (end up) like that?”

For many who escaped, the psychological trauma stayed.

“The trauma that wouldn’t heal is whenever I find myself stuck in traffic,” said Putra, the man who had been stuck in his car outside Sari.

“My hands feel cold. I get paranoid and can’t help but think whether there will be another bomb and where the explosion come from. Even now, 20 years after the incident.”

Supeno, the Sari Club assistant manager, said he only stopped attending psychotherapy sessions last year.

“Before, I wouldn’t participate in an interview like this. Just talking about the incident is enough to make me break down and cry.”

For years, Supeno has been haunted by one decision he made that fateful night.

“The club was so crowded I asked the DJ, Mugianto, to help out at the bar. If I hadn’t told him to help out, he would have been protected behind the DJ booth and survived.

Twenty years on, much has changed on Legian Road. The thoroughfare is still famous for its nightlife, but it also attracts visitors looking to pay their respects.

A monument, inspired by Balinese shadow puppetry, now stands where the parking building was once located.

Engraved on a large marble plaque are the names of the 202 people who were killed in the attacks.

Paddy’s Pub has moved to a new location less than 100m down the road.

For years, the site of the first blast was occupied by a nightclub before it went bankrupt because of the pandemic. The two-storey structure is now deserted.

Meanwhile, the site where Sari Club once stood is now a vacant plot of land that locals use as a parking lot.

Several victims and their families have been trying to buy the property for more than a decade in the hope of converting it into a Peace Park with information about the 2002 attack.

The Bali government has tried to intervene by offering the owner of the property another location. But so far, these efforts have been fruitless.

Marpaung says she supports the idea of transforming the property into a peace park.

“People need to know what happened here 20 years ago to make sure that this will never ever happen again.”