DENPASAR ~ The police dog squad has only 10 trained explosivesniffer dogs and cannot cope with extra demand for searches from international hotels, the head of the dog squad, Made Wedra, said.

He said 20 five-star hotels now regularly asked for Bali Police’s bomb-sniffer dogs to check vehicles and their premises, following the July 17 Jakarta bombings.

Some of the hotels had even asked for dogs to be on standby nearby.

“But with only 10 trained dogs we cannot meet this demand,” Wedra said on Wednesday.

“We must prioritise our operations to secure public areas from the threat of bomb attacks. We are on standby 24 hours a day for that.”

Wedra said that to meet existing demand for security searches, the squad needed about 40 trained explosive-sniffer dogs and an additional 112 personnel.