Gunmen kill at least 78 in 7 attacks in Mumbai
MUMBAI, India – Teams of heavily armed gunmen stormed luxury hotels, a popular restaurant and a crowded train station in coordinated attacks across India's financial capital Wednesday night, killing at least 78 people and taking Westerners hostage, police said. An explosion rocked one of the hotels, the landmark Taj Mahal, early Thursday, followed by raging fires. The attackers specifically targeted Britons and Americans, witnesses said. Fires burned and gunfire was heard for hours. Officials said at least 200 people were wounded.
The motive for the onslaught was not immediately clear, but Mumbai has frequently been targeted in terrorist attacks blamed on Islamic extremists, including a series of bombings in July 2007 that killed 187 people.
An Indian media report said a previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen had claimed responsibility for the attacks in e-mails to several media outlets.
Police reported hostages being held at the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, two of the best-known upscale destinations in this crowded but wealthy city.
Gunmen who burst into the Taj "were targeting foreigners. They kept shouting: `Who has U.S. or U.K. passports?'" said Ashok Patel, a British citizen who fled from the hotel.
Authorities believed seven to 15 foreigners were prisoners at the Taj Mahal, but it was not immediately clear if hostages at the Oberoi were Indians or foreigners, said Anees Ahmed, a top state official.
State Department spokesman Robert Wood said U.S. officials were not aware of any American casualties, but were still checking. He said he could not address reports that Westerners might be among the hostages.
"We condemn these attacks and the loss of innocent life," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.
Johnny Joseph, chief secretary for Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital, said 78 people had been killed and 200 had been wounded.
Blood smeared the floor of the Chhatrapati Shivaji rail station, where attackers sprayed bullets into the crowded terminal. Press Trust of India quoted the chief of the Mumbai railway police, A.K. Sharma, as saying several men armed with rifles and grenades were holed up at the station.
Other gunmen attacked Leopold's restaurant, a landmark popular with foreigners, and the police headquarters in southern Mumbai, the area where most of the attacks took place. The restaurant was riddled with bullet holes and there were blood on the floor and shoes left by fleeing customers.
A British citizen who was dining at the Oberoi hotel told Sky News television that the gunmen who struck there singled out Britons and Americans.
Alex Chamberlain said a gunman, a young man of 22 or 23, ushered 30 or 40 people from the restaurant into a stairway and ordered everyone to put up their hands. He said the gunman spoke in Hindi or Urdu.
"They were talking about British and Americans specifically. There was an Italian guy, who, you know, they said: 'Where are you from?" and he said he's from Italy and they said 'fine' and they left him alone. And I thought: 'Fine, they're going to shoot me if they ask me anything — and thank God they didn't," he said.
Chamberlain said he managed to slip away as the patrons were forced to walk up stairs, but he thought much of the group was being held hostage.
Early Thursday, several European lawmakers were among people who barricaded themselves inside the Taj, a century-old seaside hotel complex and one of the city's best-known destinations.
"I was in the main lobby and there was all of a sudden a lot of firing outside," said Sajjad Karim, part of a delegation of European lawmakers visiting Mumbai ahead of a European Union-India summit.
As he turned to get away, "all of a sudden another gunmen appeared in front of us, carrying machine gun-type weapons. And he just started firing at us ... I just turned and ran in the opposite direction," he told The Associated Press over his mobile phone.
Hours later, Karim remained holed up in a hotel restaurant, unsure if it was safe to come out.
The British Foreign Office said it was advising all British citizens in Mumbai to stay indoors.
Britain's foreign secretary, David Miliband, strongly condemned the attacks. "Today's attacks in Mumbai which have claimed many innocent victims remind us, yet again, of the threat we face from violent extremists," Miliband said in a statement.
India has been wracked by bomb attacks the past three years, which police blame on Muslim militants intent on destabilizing this largely Hindu country. Nearly 700 people have died.
Since May a militant group calling itself the Indian Mujahideen has taken credit for a string of blasts that killed more than 130 people. The most recent was in September, when a series of explosions struck a park and crowded shopping areas in the capital, New Delhi, killing 21 people and wounding about 100.
Mumbai has been hit repeatedly by terror attacks since March 1993, when Muslim underworld figures tied to Pakistani militants allegedly carried out a series of bombings on Mumbai's stock exchange, trains, hotels and gas stations. Authorities say those attacks, which killed 257 people and wounded more than 1,100, were carried out to avenge the deaths of hundreds of Muslims in religious riots that had swept India.
Ten years later, in 2003, 52 people were killed in Mumbai bombings blamed on Muslim militants and in July 2007 a series of seven blasts on railway trains and at commuter rail stations killed at least 187.
Relations between Hindus, who make up more than 80 percent of India's 1 billion population, and Muslims, who make up about 14 percent, have sporadically erupted into bouts of sectarian violence since British-ruled India was split into independent India and Pakistan in 1947.
--------
US assessing "hostage situation" in Mumbai-W.House
26 Nov 2008 21:41:53 GMT
Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON, Nov 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. government is "assessing the hostage situation" in the aftermath of a series of deadly attacks in India's financial capital Mumbai, the White House said on Wednesday.
"No word on any American casualties at this point, and still assessing the hostage situation," said Ben Chang, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, when asked whether an Americans were being held after attacks apparently aimed at tourists.
(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick, Editing by Sandra Maler)
26 Nov 2008 22:02:11 GMT
Source: Reuters
MUMBAI, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Large plumes of smoke were seen rising from the top of the landmark Taj Hotel in Mumbai on Thursday and heavy firing could be heard, a Reuters witness said.
Local TV reported that unknown assailants had earlier attacked the hotel, taking hostages, including Western tourists. (alistair.scrutton@thomsonreuters.com; +91-11-41781015; Reuters Messaging: alistair.scrutton.reuters.net@reuters.com))
----------
Mumbai mourns attacks on beloved icons Taj and Leo's
27 Nov 2008 09:27:57 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Rina Chandran
Flames gush out of the roof of The Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai on November 27 after an attack on the hotel. Army commandos have laid siege to the Taj Mahal and the Oberoi Trident hotel where gunmen held foreign guests hostage as part of coordinated attacks across India's financial capital that have left up to 100 dead.
(AFP/Indranil Mukherjee)
MUMBAI, Nov 27 (Reuters) - In the harsh morning light there was no escaping the truth: the Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai's iconic luxury hotel, was hurting after gunmen laid siege to it.
As angry orange flames resisted firemens' attempts to douse them, thick black smoke billowed from the heritage, or palace, wing, obscuring the distinctive central dome and smaller cuppolas that are an integral part of south Mumbai's skyline.
Soot marred the red-white-and-grey-brick facade, and curious onlookers, anxious hotel employees, tired reporters all gaped at the hotel, tut-tutting and shaking their heads.
A spokesman for the hotel, owned by Tata Group's Indian Hotels Co, said in a statement: "The Taj is very much a symbol of India. We will rebuild every inch that has been damaged in this attack and bring back the Taj to its full glory."
That will be tough in this day and age.
The brainchild of wealthy industrialist Jamsetji Tata, the hotel was built at a cost of a quarter of a million pounds more than 100 years ago, and boasted such features as the first air-conditioned ballroom in the country and a Turkish bath.
One story of its origin is that Tata took a foreign friend to dinner in a plush Mumbai hotel, only to be told he was not welcome since he was Indian.
Slighted, Tata vowed to build a finer hotel that would welcome all Indians, and set about his mission with zeal.
He leased a plot of land of about two acres on reclaimed land on Mumbai's seafront, and got involved in its design and interiors, shopping at London, Dusseldorf, Berlin and Paris.
A more apocryphal story of its design, an example of Indo-Sarcenic architecture, is that the entrance to the hotel is actually in the back, and not on the sea-front, with construction workers messing up the plan when the architect was away.
Either way, with its vaulted alabaster ceilings, onyx columns, graceful archways, crystal chandeliers and a dramatic cantilever staircase that employees refer to as the "grand staircase", the hotel always makes a big impression on visitors.
Inaugurated in 1903, it welcomed the Prince of Wales on his state visit two years later in an ironic twist.
Tourists and locals have wandered its hallways, admiring its art and a collection of black-and-white photographs of some of the maharajas, presidents, rock stars and chief executives who have stayed, including John Lennon and John F. Kennedy.
The 1970s saw the addition of a more modern tower wing alongside, but its arched balconies failed to impress.
EVERYONE GOES TO LEO'S
Less dramatic but just as beloved to locals and tourists in Mumbai is Leopold's Cafe, a popular bar on the bustling Colaba Causeway road, the nerve centre of shopping and dining.
Opening in 1871 as a wholesale oil store, it later became a restaurant, and then opened an on-site pub in the 1990s. Always popular for cheap beer and greasy snacks, it shot to fame when it was featured in the bestselling 2003 novel "Shantaram".
A stack of books autographed by Australian author Gregory David Roberts sits prominently on a counter in the cafe.
With its checkered tablecloths and doors that open wide on to the sidewalk, Leopold's is also known as the place for tourists to land a role in a Bollywood movie.
But the grim scene of blood-spattered shoes and napkins outside the shuttered cafe on Wednesday after gunmen fired at guests was a far cry from lavish Bollywood musicals.
A senior British executive for a foreign firm who has been in India for over a year, said life had to go on after the attacks.
"It's one of those things we have to live with and we have to get back to normal as soon as we can," he said.
"But just to walk into Leopold's -- that's so horrific." (Additional reporting by Charlotte Cooper; Editing by Simon Denyer and Sanjeev Miglani)
-------
Few flights to Mumbai cancelled after attacks
27 Nov 2008 10:34:38 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Adds additional airlines, TUI, Thomas Cook, background)
By Maria Sheahan and Matthew Scuffham FRANKFURT/LONDON, Nov 27 (Reuters) - A handful of flights from Europe to Mumbai were cancelled on Thursday after more than 100 people were killed in attacks on luxury hotels, hospitals and a tourist cafe in India's financial capital.
Most airlines said they were monitoring the situation and were making contingency plans should it worsen, and Europe's biggest travel firm TUI Travel said it did not expect large numbers of cancellations.
Some 17 hours after the late-evening assault, soldiers and militants were still exchanging intermittent fire and more than 100 people were trapped inside rooms of the Taj Mahal hotel, a 105-year-old city landmark. [nSP367626]
Germany's flagship carrier Lufthansa
"Today there were supposed to be two flights there, from Frankfurt and Munich, and those will not take place. Tomorrow we'll have to see how the situation develops," a spokesman for Lufthansa said.
Both Air France and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, the two main carriers of Europe's largest airline group Air France KLM
But a British Airways
TUI Travel said Goa in India was a bigger destination than Mumbai for holiday travellers.
"We understand that we have one or two holidaymakers in Mumbai on a tour which is clearly very regrettable and we're just trying to understand what their whereabouts are at the moment," TUI Travel Chief Executive Peter Long told Reuters.
"From previous tragedies, our customers are becoming hardened and it will not impact on their holiday arrangements ... There will certainly be some cancellations but I don't think it will be huge numbers," he said.
SECURITY FIRST
Thomas Cook, Europe's no. 2 travel operator, said it had 20 to 30 holidaymakers in Mumbai who were all accounted for, and that it did not anticipate cancellations.
Flight cancellations have also hit passengers to Thailand, where a blockade by anti-government protesters at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport, a major Asian air hub, entered its third day on Thursday, stranding thousands of tourists.
Thailand is offering a naval airbase on the eastern seaboard as an alternative for airlines.
The airline industry is going through a rough patch, with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) saying international air traffic declined from a year ago for the second consecutive month in October. [nWEA7013]
Among the airlines that said they will continue to fly to Mumbai were Indian airline Jet Airways
Scandinavian airline SAS
"We put the passagers' security above everything else, and if there is trouble we will take that decision at that point ... as far as I know there haven't been any incidents in New Delhi," said SAS spokesman Anders Lindstrom.
In Asia, Australian flag carrier Qantas, which flies three times a week into Mumbai from Sydney, said it is monitoring the situation and working on contingency plans to add capacity if necessary to help get people out of Mumbai. (Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux in Amsterdam, Brussels, Helsinki, London, Vienna, Sydney, Stockholm and Paris; Editing by Chris Wickham)
------------
The Indian navy said its forces were boarding a cargo vessel suspected of ties to the attacks.
Navy spokesman Capt. Manohar Nambiar said Thursday that the ship, the MV Alpha, had recently come to Mumbai from Karachi, Pakistan.
If few Karachi terrorists can rule over Mumbai overnight, why PAK ARMY failed to take over Kashmir and Kargil, the most difficult terrain full of mountaains and valleys.
Indian Navy failed to intercept them , may be they were, too, busy for overnight thanksgiving parties offshore onboard, along with brotherly navy.
-------
CHABAD HOUSE:
* An Israeli rabbi was being held hostage by gunmen in Chabad House, formerly known as Nariman House, an apartment building in the downtown Colaba area of the city.
* A militant at the centre offered talks with government for the release of hostages. Commandos were said to be gathered outside centre but holding off from an assault.
* The building, the name of which name refers to the Jewish
religious movement called Chabad, is a popular stop for Israeli visitors to Mumbai, according to local media.
------
The gunmen also seized the Mumbai headquarters of the ultra-orthodox Jewish outreach group Chabad Lubavitch. Around 10:30 a.m., a woman, a child and an Indian cook were seen being led out of the building by police, said one witness.
Chabad spokesman Moni Ender in Israel said there were eight Israelis inside the house, including Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife.
Dozens of Indian commandoes surrounded the five-story building, where heavy curtains hung behind windows broken by gunfire. Outside the center, thousands of people stood in the narrow alleyways watching the standoff.
There are Shluchim in Mumbai, the Holtzberg family, who have not been reachable, and are feared held captive by the terrorists.
CODE
Israel says it is concerned for the safety of its citizens in Mumbai, as a rabbi and his family are feared captured by gunmen.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7751707.stm
Please say Tehillim for them:
* Gavriel Noach ben Freida Bluma
* Rivkah bas Yehudis
* Moshe Tzvi Ben Rivkah
-------
Four Top Officers Among 10 Policemen Killed
in Mumbai
Mumbai
Four top police officials, including Mumbai Police Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare, were among the 10 policemen killed as security forces took on terrorists here in the early hours of Thursday, authorities said.
Two Indian Police Service (IPS) officers - additional police commissioners Ashok Kamte and Sadanand Date - were killed in separate gun battles with terrorists following a series of attacks in India's financial capital, the officials said.
Mumbai Police "encounter specialist" Vijay Salaskar were also shot dead in another gun battle.
Karkare was heading investigations into several recent cases of terrorist attacks here. There were six other police officials among the at least 80 killed in the coordinated terror attacks late Wednesday night.
-----------
India's Leaders Need to Look Closer to Home
The Assault on Mumbai
By TARIQ ALI
The terrorist assault on Mumbai’s five-star hotels was well planned, but did not require a great deal of logistic intelligence: all the targets were soft. The aim was to create mayhem by shining the spotlight on India and its problems and in that the terrorists were successful. The identity of the black-hooded group remains a mystery.
The Deccan Mujahedeen, which claimed the outrage in an e-mail press release, is certainly a new name probably chosen for this single act. But speculation is rife. A senior Indian naval officer has claimed that the attackers (who arrived in a ship, the M V Alpha) were linked to Somali pirates, implying that this was a revenge attack for the Indian Navy’s successful if bloody action against pirates in the Arabian Gulf that led to heavy casualties some weeks ago.
The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has insisted that the terrorists were based outside the country. The Indian media has echoed this line of argument with Pakistan (via the Lashkar-e-Taiba) and al-Qaeda listed as the usual suspects.
But this is a meditated edifice of official India’s political imagination. Its function is to deny that the terrorists could be a homegrown variety, a product of the radicalization of young Indian Muslims who have finally given up on the indigenous political system. To accept this view would imply that the country’s political physicians need to heal themselves.
Al Qaeda, as the CIA recently made clear, is a group on the decline. It has never come close to repeating anything vaguely resembling the hits of 9/11.
Its principal leader Osama bin Laden may well be dead (he certainly did not make his trademark video intervention in this year’s Presidential election in the United States) and his deputy has fallen back on threats and bravado.
What of Pakistan? The country’s military is heavily involved in actions on its Northwest frontier where the spillage from the Afghan war has destabilized the region. The politicians currently in power are making repeated overtures to India. The Lashkar-e-Taiba, not usually shy of claiming its hits, has strongly denied any involvement with the Mumbai attacks.
Why should it be such a surprise if the perpetrators are themselves Indian Muslims? Its hardly a secret that there has been much anger within the poorest sections of the Muslim community against the systematic discrimination and acts of violence carried out against them of which the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in shining Gujarat was only the most blatant and the most investigated episode, supported by the Chief Minister of the State and the local state apparatuses.
Add to this the continuing sore of Kashmir which has for decades been treated as a colony by Indian troops with random arrests, torture and rape of Kashmiris an everyday occurrence. Conditions have been much worse than in Tibet, but have aroused little sympathy in the West where the defense of human rights is heavily instrumentalised.
Indian intelligence outfits are well aware of all this and they should not encourage the fantasies of their political leaders. Its best to come out and accept that there are severe problems inside the country. A billion Indians: 80 percent Hindus and 14 percent Muslims. A very large minority that cannot be ethnically cleansed without provoking a wider conflict.
None of this justifies terrorism, but it should, at the very least, force India’s rulers to direct their gaze on their own country and the conditions that prevail. Economic disparities are profound. The absurd notion that the trickle-down effects of global capitalism would solve most problems can now be seen for what it always was: a fig leaf to conceal new modes of exploitation.
--------
Commandos kill the last Islamist gunman holed up at
Mumbai's Taj Mahal hotel, ending three-day rampage and siege
that killed at least 195 people
---------
Mumbai gunmen trained in Pakistan: investigators
By Krittivas Mukherjee
MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian investigators said on Monday the militants who attacked Mumbai had months of commando training in Pakistan, adding to rising tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors as recriminations mounted at home.
The fallout prompted a second top politician from India's ruling Congress party to resign, amid growing anger at intelligence failures that many Indians believe allowed 10 Islamist gunmen to kill 183 people and besiege India's financial capital for three bloody days.
The attacks, which struck Mumbai's two best-known luxury hotels and other landmarks in the city of 18 million, are a major setback for improving ties between India and Pakistan.
The White House said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would visit India on Wednesday, underscoring the seriousness with which Washington viewed the attacks and the potential threat they had to regional stability.
"I don't want to jump to any conclusions myself on this, but I do think that this is a time for complete, absolute, total transparency and cooperation and that is what we expect (from Pakistan)," Rice told reporters traveling with her to London.
Two senior investigators told Reuters on condition of anonymity that evidence from the interrogation of Azam Amir Kasav, the only gunmen of the 10 captured alive, clearly showed that Pakistani militants had a hand in the attack.
The clean-shaven, 21-year-old with fluent English was photographed during the attack wearing a black t-shirt emblazoned with the Versace logo. He has said his team took orders from "their command in Pakistan," police officials said.
PAKISTAN TRAINING
The training was organized by the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, and conducted by a former member of the Pakistani army, a police officer close to the interrogation told Reuters, on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak.
"They underwent training in several phases, which included training in handling weapons, bomb making, survival strategies, survival in a marine environment and even dietary habits," another senior officer told Reuters.
The Pakistani-based Lashkar-e-Taiba made its name fighting Indian rule in Kashmir but was also blamed for an attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 that brought the nuclear-armed neighbors close to war.
Lashkar had had close links to Pakistan's military spy agency in the past, security experts say, although the government in Islamabad insists it too is fighting the group and other Islamist extremists based on its soil.
New Delhi has not accused Islamabad's civilian government of involvement but has expressed deep frustration that its neighbor has been unable or unwilling to prevent militants using its soil to attack Indian cities.
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has appealed to India not to punish his country for last week's attacks, saying militants could precipitate a war, the Financial Times reported on Monday.
"Even if the militants are linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, who do you think we are fighting?" asked Zardari in an interview with the Financial Times.
Officials in Islamabad have warned any escalation would force it to divert troops to the Indian border and away from a U.S.-led anti-militant campaign on the Afghan frontier.
"It's part of the usual blackmail of the United States that Pakistan does to take more interest in India-Pakistan issues," said B. Raman, a former head of Indian intelligence agency RAW.
New Delhi said on Sunday it was raising security to a "war level" and had no doubt of a Pakistani link.
In an apparent attempt to deflect the blame, intelligence agencies told TV channels they had repeatedly warned of an imminent attack on Mumbai by sea. But police and coastguard officials denied receiving any actionable intelligence.
"NO ONE ACTED"
As anger mounted, the chief minister of Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital, offered to resign. Vilasrao Deshmukh, a member of the ruling Congress party, could follow his deputy, state home minister R. R. Patil, out the door.
Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil also stepped down on Sunday, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced an overhaul of the nation's counter-terrorism capabilities.
There have been a series of major bomb attacks on Indian cities this year and threats that more would follow, which has given the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party fodder to blast the ruling party in the runup to elections due by May.
The leader of Maharashtra's main fishermen's union says he had tipped off the government four months ago about militants using the sea to land RDX explosives in Mumbai.
"No one acted upon our information," Damodar Tandel said.
A huge consignment of explosives and guns brought ashore in Mumbai in 1993 was used to set off a string of bombs in the city that killed 257 people.
Mumbai residents returned to schools and offices on Monday for the first time since the attacks. India's main share index rose around two percent, with sentiment helped by the reshuffle of key posts.
Candlelight vigils were held in New Delhi and at various spots in Mumbai on Sunday, with people holding hands, singing and carrying banners, some in remembrance of victims, others protesting over what they saw as government inaction.
Candles and flowers were also strewn at the bullet-scarred Cafe Leopold and at barricades in front of the Taj and Trident hotels, where the gunmen holed up during the 60-hour siege.
(Reporting by New Delhi, Mumbai and Islamabad bureaux, and Sue Pleming in London; Writing by Bryson Hull; Editing by Simon Denyer and Paul Tait)
No comments:
Post a Comment