Terrorists Slam Indian Gate
// Mumbai exposed to unprecedented attack
Bombay on fire
India’s business capital Mumbai (Bombay) has been exposed to an unprecedented terrorist attack, which included a series of explosions and taking people hostage. Unlike previous attacks, this time terrorists’ main target was not Indians; rather, it was Americans and British living in luxurious hotels. The scale of the terrorist attack reminded about Al-Qaeda’s threats to plot a new 9/11 — already outside the U.S. According to the information of Kommersant, no Russian citizen was killed or injured in Mumbai.
Foreigners, out!
On Wednesday night a wave of terror rolled on 17-million Mumbai. The city’s ten main sites were exposed to a synchronous attack: a railway station, an airport, a popular cinema, two hospitals, a shipyard, a service station and three luxurious hotels — Taj Mahal, Oberoi and Ramada. Terrorist groups of up to 20 members, armed with large-caliber machine guns, submachine guns AK-47 and hand grenades, participated in the attack.
Suddenly appearing in different areas of the metropolis, stretched along the ocean coast, death squadrons opened chaotic fire and threw grenades at people. However, as was found later, the first attacks were auxiliary — they were aimed at spreading panic and distracting the police’s attention from the main blow. First of all, terrorists were going to attack the city’s hotels, where influential and rich foreigners stayed.
About 9 p.m. local time a group of insurgents rushed into the foyer of the Taj Mahal hotel, one of the key sites of the city, and began firing randomly with submachine guns. Threatening to kill administrators, they demanded the numbers of rooms where foreigners stayed. Terrorists managed to seize a group of 15 hostages, half consisting of foreigners, and to get to the top floor.
“We had supper in the hotel’s inner yard, and suddenly, several people ran through the boutique gallery to the place where we sat and started shooting at people,” Rosoboronexport experts, who lived in the Taj Mahal, told Kommersant. “People scattered in all directions, some of them hid in hotel rooms, others stayed in some hall all night long. In the morning, as we understood that shooting abated, we began leaving the hotel.”
A similar scenario was applied when attacking two other five-star hotels — Oberoi and Ramada, where terrorists also seized hostages. Oberoi is connected with the Trydent hotel, where an Aeroflot crew stayed.
“In the evening our pilots went down to the restaurant to have supper, and two stewardesses decided to go to bed earlier,” Aeroflot representative in Mumbai Valery Maksimov told Kommersant. “At 10 p.m. the hotel’s personnel came to the table where our pilots sat, and asked them to pass to the trade center nearby. Only there it was explained to the pilots that armed criminals rushed into the next-door Oberoi, shot several people and took hostages. At half past ten the pilots called me, and I went to the place where they were. There was no panic in the city, I heard no shooting, but on the way to the hotel I saw a police jeep riddled with bullets, with a few people lying in blood. There was a police cordon around the Trydent and Oberoi, and nobody was let in.”
No talks
After seizing the hotels, terrorists from an unknown group Deccan Mujahideen issued an ultimatum: they wanted all Mujahideen in Indian prisons released before they released their hostages. Insurgents made a statement broadcast by the Indian TV.
The ultimatum was immediately rejected. “We will either kill or capture them,” a high-ranking representative of the Mumbai police promised. Snipers were deployed on the roofs of the buildings nearby. The police, special forces and army units began preparing for a special operation.
It was decided to storm the Taj Mahal first. The operation of rescuing hostages in India’s oldest hotel lasted for 11 hours. Insurgents rendered fierce resistance. In the operation in the Taj Mahal, counter-terrorist unit commander Hemant Karkare, who personally headed the operation, was killed – he received three bullet wounds in the chest. Only yesterday afternoon authorities stated that insurgents were annihilated and hostages were released. There were dozens corpses in the hotel halls.
Special operations in Oberoi and Ramada, which began yesterday morning, and cleansings in some areas of Mumbai lasted till evening.
The death toll continued growing. According to preliminary data, 125 people were killed, over 300 people were injured. The media reported that citizens of Japan, Australia, Germany, Hungary and Spain were among the casualties. “No our expert suffered during the attack,” Press Secretary of Rosoboronexport CEO Vyacheslav Davydenko told Kommersant.
External linkages
Since 1993 the largest Indian cities have been regularly exposed to terrorist attacks, which destabilize both the inner political situation and India’s relations with its neighbors — Pakistan and Bangladesh. Over a thousand people fell victim to the terrorist attacks of the previous fifteen years. Mumbai was attacked twice: in 1993 the famous Bombay stock exchange was blown up, and on July 11, 2006 700 people became victims of a series of explosions in Mumbai trains, with 200 people killed.
In this sense the recent terrorist attacks in India’s business capital outwardly look as a continuation of the previous attacks. But there are at least two circumstances that make the latest developments in Mumbai differ from the previous.
First, it is the first time in the history of the Indian terrorism that a combined attack with different terrorist methods was undertaken: explosions, shooting, seizing hostages. Second, earlier terrorist attacks of Islamic insurgents were intended to destabilize the inner political situation and strain relations between the two leading religious communities of India — Hindus and Moslems, whereas this time foreigners became the main target of terrorists. Particularly, the owners of American and British passports.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the attacks probably had “external linkages.” Later the media reported detaining a cargo ship, which arrived in Mumbai from the Pakistani port of Karachi. It is supposed that weapons were delivered to terrorists onboard that vessel.
In this connection observers point to a warning of Al-Qaeda’s second leader Ajman az-Zavahiri, who said about preparing terrorist attacks against the U.S. and about Pakistan becoming Al-Qaeda’s new training base along with Iraq and Afghanistan. Therefore the explosions in Mumbai can be regarded as a continuation of the world terrorist war against America, but already outside its territory.
Sergei Tamilin, Vladislav Trifonov
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 28, 2008
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