Three bomb blasts ripped through crowded restaurants on the famous Indonesian resort island of Bali on Saturday, killing 25 people including foreigners and wounding 102, officials said.
Police confirmed three blasts at separate restaurants packed with evening diners, two at outdoor seafood eateries on Jimbaran Beach and one at a steak bar at Kuta Beach in an area surrounded by shops and jammed with pedestrians, including children.
The victims included foreign tourists. However, there are no reports of any Irish citizens being injured in the bombings.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, strongly condemned the bomb attacks.
"I utterly condemn this barbaric attack which was deliberately designed to kill and injure innocent people. No cause can ever justify terrorist atrocities of this kind," he said.
Mr Ahern added that officials from the Embassy in Singapore are to travel to Bali to provide any consular assistance that may be required to Irish people there.
A local television station quoted witnesses who said one of the Jimbaran explosions was near the upmarket Four Seasons Hotel.
The authorities have not said how the bombs were delivered or if suicide attackers were responsible for blasts.
Officials at Bali's Sanglah hospital said 25 dead had been brought in. So far 12 bodies had been identified, comprising 10 Indonesians, one Australian and a Japanese national. The wounded including 16 Australians, six South Koreans, three Americans, three Japanese and one Briton.
Australian Jason Childs said he was having dinner along Jimbaran Beach when the bombs went off.
"We helped a few victims on the sand there on the beach and there were a few people lying ... on the tables which are out on the beach, dead," Childs told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, according to its website.
"I didn't want to walk in there too far, too scared another bomb would go off, and everyone started screaming 'there's another bomb' and everyone started running."
Inside the badly damaged Raja restaurant and bar in Kuta Beach, a popular eatery, blood was spattered on the floor. Shattered glass from other shops and cafes littered the street.
Wounded Indonesians sat on the pavement, some weeping, while foreigners fled the scene in panic, some having to first climb down mangled multi-storied shop and restaurant fronts to get away.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the nearly simultaneous blasts as terrorism. He also warned of the possibility of further attacks.
"We will hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice," he said after being briefed by top security officials. He also urged people "to be on alert."
The blasts "were clearly the work of terrorists," said police Major General Ansyaad Mbai, a top Indonesian anti-terrorism official.
The explosions come almost exactly three years since Islamic militants linked to al Qaeda bombed two nightclubs in Kuta in October 2002, killing 202 people, mainly foreign tourists.
Indonesia officials have been warning for months that Islamic militants were likely to launch more bombing attacks in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
While there are no reports of any Irish citizens being injured in the bombings, the Department of Foreign Affairs has set up an emergency helpline.
There are two numbers for the helpline, 01-408 2308 and 01-408 2833.