BALI BOMBINGS 20 YEARS ON Innocence lost

Two decades after the atrocity that claimed 202 lives, including 88 Australians, those who were there and those who lost loved ones share their heartbreaking and inspiring stories with marie claire.

- Michael Crooks

She was suffering severe burns across her back and arm, multiple shrapnel wounds, and a deep gash in her wrist, but Megan Basioli knew she had to keep moving. Only she couldn't. The searing pain was so intense for the 14-year-old from Perth that as she tried to stumble with her stepmother and stepsister down the dark, chaotic street in Bali's Kuta district where devastating explosions had ripped through two nightspots, she kept falling to the ground. Then she felt herself being lifted from behind, as a stranger carried her to a nearby hotel, where other victims were being cared for by hotel staff, locals, and tourists.

As she lay near the hotel pool, a teenager from Sydney named Craig, who was holidaying with his family, came and sat beside her.

"He just asked if I was OK," Megan recalls. "He was staying at a hotel nearby and ran down with his family to help when they heard the explosions. I said, 'Can you please stay next to me?' And he did. He stayed with me the whole time. And when they took me to the hospital he stayed next to me there, too, just holding my hand."

It is 20 years since the Bali bombings, a religiously motivated attack that killed 202 people from 23 countries, including 88 from Australia - the single largest loss of Australian lives due to a terror attack. Carried out by Islamist group Jemaah Islamiyah, the atrocity began at 11.05pm inside the packed Paddy's Pub in Kuta, when a suicide bomber detonated explosives in a backpack; 20 seconds later, a more powerful car bomb was detonated outside the Sari Club, opposite Paddy's.

Megan lost her father that night of October 12, 2002, and underwent years of agonizing rehabilitation for the burns that covered 36 percent of her body. But it was what she witnessed in the aftermath of the terror that became the founding of her future.