Staring blankly at the pile of rubble that once housed the Sari Club, Peter Chworowsky shook his head and hugged his fellow rugby players.
Teammate Kelvin Bezuidenhout sobbed as a group of Balinese threw rose petals on the site of Saturday's bomb blast. Behind the charred remains of a nearby pub, someone sang Amazing Grace.
This memorial Tuesday marked the end of a chapter for the Taipei Baboons, a tight-knit expatriate rugby club based in Taiwan. It was a chance to say goodbye to the four teammates and a female fan they lost, and reflect on how the terrorist attack changed their lives.
"I feel mostly sadness for the guys that didn't get out," said Chworowsky, a 43-year-old American businessman from Lakeville, Wisconsin who was left partially deaf from the blast. "But I'm also sad for the terrorists. I'm trying to figure out why they would do that, how their minds would get so screwed up that they would bomb a nightclub."
More than 180 people were killed and 300 wounded in the car-bomb attack on the popular nightclub. Indonesian officials suspect the al-Qaeda terrorist network carried out the bombing.
Rugby teams -- in town for a weekend tournament -- appear to be among the hardest hit. Chwor-owsky said many players spent the weekend at the Sari Club, and at least three teams he has talked to lost a combined total of up to 15 players.
Among them was the Hong Kong Football Club, which confirmed Tuesday that it lost two players and that five other players and two female fans remain missing.
Twenty members of the Taipei team arrived in Bali Thursday and Friday and hung out at the Sari Club and nearby Paddy's.
They played three games Saturday, had dinner and headed for the Sari Club around 10pm. Packed with mostly young Australian and European tourists, it seemed like a typical night out -- until the crowd heard a loud bang around 11:30pm.
Most turned around to see an orange glow coming from Paddy's, where a first bomb exploded. Seconds later, a second, more powerful explosion tore into the Sari Club. It knocked many patrons unconscious, caused the roof to collapse and sparked a fire that consumed the bar within minutes.
The stunned players found themselves covered in concrete or pieces of the roof. They smelled smoke and heard the crackling of the fast-moving fire.
"It was pitch black and you could see the glow of the fire illuminating the room," said Scott Murphy, a 29-year-old Australian from Brisbane whose brother, Max, also survived. "I just started grabbing people and pulling them to their feet."
Nearby, Chworowsky found himself on his back, being trampled on. He got up and saw the main entrance blocked by thick smoke and flames. Bodies were everywhere and screams filled the air.
"I remember thinking `this is what war is like,'" he said.
Chworowsky scrambled out through a hole in a wall. He soon realized that at least five of the 12 players at the club had not come out.
"When I was standing on the street, I was thinking anyone who did not get out was probably gone," he said.
The teammates later searched for the missing, but found only one injured player at a hospital.
The Taipei team's lost members -- James Hardman, 28, of Sydney; Daniel Braden, 28, of Brighton, England; Godfrey Fitz, 39, and Craig Harty, 35, both of South Africa; and Eve Kuo, 24, of Taiwan -- will leave a gaping hole in the club that players described as their extended family.
Fitz was the smooth-talking teacher, who had been a soccer star in South Africa. Braden was the wacky dresser with the dry sense of humor. Hardman was the surfer who couldn't stop talking about Australia. And Harty was a family man who had just recovered from the death of his brother and illness of his mother.
"You couldn't have asked for better mates than these guys," Boyden said.
The surviving club members said they have all decided one thing -- that the club will eventually take to the field again.
"This is what we loved to do with these guys," Max Murphy said. "That's what they would have wanted."
The team plans to hold a private memorial service on Yangmingshan this Sunday.
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
Taiwan is still in the process of assessing the possibility of recruiting workers from Eswatini, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, adding that its goal is to help Eswatini upgrade its vocational training centers. If there are plans to recruit workers from Eswatini, safeguarding national security, protecting public health and ensuring the employment rights of Taiwanese would be prerequisites, Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Yen Chia-liang (顏嘉良) told a news conference. Key considerations would also include filling labor shortages in specific industries, and fostering bilateral professional and technical exchanges, he said. Yen was asked about the progress of labor
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
WARNING: China should stop engaging in actions that undermine regional peace and stability, as it would only build resentment among people across the Strait, the CGA said China has deployed more than 100 navy, coast guard and other vessels in waters from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea and the western Pacific since US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met in Beijing, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday. “In this part of the world, #China is the one & only PROBLEM wrecking the #StatusQuo & threatening regional peace & stability,” Wu wrote on X. In a separate post, he said Beijing was coercing Taiwan’s maritime domain, calling it illegal and provocative, after the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) expelled a
RSS