Mumbai Nightmare Ends?

Army personnel lie down near a tourism poster of Taj Mahal Hotel,  and aim a grenade launcher at a part of the facade of the Taj Mahal Hotel, unseen,  in Mumbai on November 28. (AP Photo)

MUMBAI, November 28 (Agencies): The attack on Mumbai was on the verge of ending tonight with security forces securing the 5-star Oberoi hotel and a Jewish Centre but a lone gunman continued to hold out inside the Taj hotel at the end of pitched combat that left 30 hostages dead. Commandos who stormed the Mumbai headquarters of an ultra-orthodox Jewish group found the bodies of five hostages inside, Indian and Israeli rescue officials said, as a fresh battle raged at the luxury Taj Mahal hotel and other Indian forces ended a siege at another five-star hotel. More than 150 people have been killed since gunmen attacked 10 sites across India’s financial capital starting Wednesday night, including 22 foreigners - two of them Americans, officials said.
Early Friday night, Indian commandos emerged from a besieged Jewish center with rifles raised in an apparent sign of victory after a daylong siege that saw a team rappel from helicopters and a series of explosions and fire rock the building and blow giant holes in the wall. Inside, though, were five dead hostages. A delegation from Israel’s ZAKA emergency medical services unit entered the building after the raid and reported through an Indian aide that five hostages and two gunmen were dead, a ZAKA spokesman in Israel said.

The spokesman had no information on the hostages’ identities or whether there were wounded inside. Jewish law requires the burial of a dead person’s entire body, and the mission of the ultra-Orthodox ZAKA volunteers is to rescue the living - and in the case of the dead, carry out the task of gathering up all collectable pieces of flesh and blood. Numerous local media reports, quoting top military officials, also said five hostages and two gunmen had been killed in the Jewish center. By Friday evening, at least nine gunmen had been killed, one had been arrested and as many as six were still in the Taj Mahal, said R. Patil, a top official in Mumbai. Others said there was likely only one or two gunmen still inside. Patil said more than 150 people had been killed and 370 injured.
After hours of intermittent gunfire and explosions Friday at the Taj Mahal, a hotel with 565 rooms, the battle heated up at dusk when Indian forces began launching grenades at the hotel, where at least one militant was believed to be holed up inside a ballroom, officials said. Commandos had killed the two last gunmen inside the nearby Oberoi earlier in the day. “The hotel is under our control,” J.K. Dutt, director general of India’s elite National Security Guard commando unit, told reporters, adding that 24 bodies had been found. Dozens of people - including a man clutching a baby - had been evacuated from Oberoi earlier Friday.
The airborne assault on the center run by the ultra-orthodox Jewish outreach group Chabad Lubavitch was punctuated by gunshots and explosions and exchanges of fire as forces cleared it floor by floor, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. Nearly 12 hours after the battle began, Indian troops left the building to cheers from the crowd. Mumbai Police Chief Hassan Ghaffoor said “the operation was ongoing” but in its “final stage.”
Security officials said their operations were almost over. “It’s just a matter of a few hours that we’ll be able to wrap up things,” Lt. Gen. N. Thamburaj told reporters Friday morning. The group rescued from the Oberoi, many holding passports, included at least two Americans, a Briton, two Japanese nationals and several Indians. Some carried luggage with Canadian flags. One man in a chef’s uniform was holding a small baby. About 20 airline crew members were freed, including staff from Lufthansa and Air France.
“I’m going home, I’m going to see my wife,” said Mark Abell, with a huge smile on his face after emerging from the hotel. Abell, from Britain, had locked himself in his room during the siege. The well-coordinated strikes by small bands of gunmen starting Wednesday night left the city shell-shocked. Late Thursday, after about 400 people had been brought out of the Taj hotel, officials said it had been cleared of gunmen, but they later said two to three more were still inside with about 15 civilians.
Oberoi, Nariman House secured; death toll rises
On Friday, India’s foreign minister pointed an accusing finger across the border at rival Pakistan. “According to preliminary information, some elements in Pakistan are responsible for Mumbai terror attacks,” Pranab Mukherjee told reporters in the western city of Jodhpur. “Proof cannot be disclosed at this time,” he said, adding that Pakistan had assured New Delhi it would not allow its territory to be used for attacks against India.
Earlier Friday, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar, in Islamabad, denied involvement by his country: “I will say in very categoric terms that Pakistan is not involved in these gory incidents.” Indian home minister Jaiprakash Jaiswal said a captured gunmen had been identified as a Pakistani and Patil, the Maharashtra state official, said: “It is very clear that the terrorists are from Pakistan. We have enough evidence that they are from Pakistan.” Neither provided further details.
Pakistan’s government said Friday that it will send its spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shujaa Pasha, to India to help probe the attacks. The gunmen apparently came to Mumbai by boat, and Indian forces expanded their investigation to the sea. Authorities stopped a cargo ship off the western coast of Gujarat that had sailed from Saudi Arabia and handed it over to police for investigation, said Navy Capt. Manohar Nambiar.
The gunmen were well-prepared, apparently scouting some targets ahead of time and carrying large bags of almonds to keep up their energy. “It’s obvious they were trained somewhere ... Not everyone can handle the AK series of weapons or throw grenades like that,” an unidentified member of India’s Marine Commando unit told reporters, his face wrapped in a black mask. He said the men were “very determined and remorseless” and ready for a long siege.

Probe into British link to Mumbai attacks

LONDON, November 28 (AFP): The government said Friday it was too early to tell if Britons of Pakistani origin could be among the gunmen in the Mumbai attacks, but acknowledged it was “intensively” probing who was behind the plot. Foreign Secretary David Miliband said British detectives, who have already travelled to India, will work with their Indian counterparts to shed light on the source of the plot. “We obviously will want to work very, very closely with the Indians on that, but it is too early to say whether or not any of them are British,” he told Sky News television.

“Obviously, the priority of the Indian authorities is to complete this operation. They can then start identifying who are the terrorists, what is their background.” According to online newspaper reports, an Indian television news channel had reported that “British citizens of Pakistani origin” were among the attackers.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Thursday that those behind coordinated attacks against Mumbai were based “outside the country,” which was widely interpreted as meaning neighbouring Pakistan. Prime Minister Gordon Brown was cautious regarding a British link. “I would not want to be drawn into early conclusions about this,” he said. “There is so much information still to be discovered and made available.
“But obviously when you have terrorists operating in one country they may be getting support from another country or coming from another country,” he said, adding that he would speak to the Indian premier later in the day. Responding to swirling rumours about where the Mumbai militants came from, anti-terror police in northern England issued a statement playing down any local links. “At this stage we are not in receipt of any intelligence or information linking the events in India to our area,” said the Leeds-based Counter Terrorism Unit of West Yorkshire Police.

NPCC stands with Mumbai

 Dimapur, November 28 (MExN): The NPCC, joining in the condemnation of the terror attacks in Mumbai, has called for a united stand against terror elements and to stem them out from the face of humanity. In a letter addressed to the chief minister of Maharashtra Vilasrao Deshmukh, from NPCC’s chief KV Pusa, the Congress said the reign of terror created by the ‘senseless terrorists’ in the financial hub of India has deeply shaken the entire fabric of the Nation. Expressing concern and anguish, the NPCC condemned “the most dastard and coward act of the mindless and ruthless terrorists in which a hundred innocent lives have been lost and several hundreds injured”.

The NPCC also mourned the deaths of several police officers and personnel, extending salutations for laying down their lives. “Though they are no more with us, the sacrificial deeds will be inscribed in the minds of the people as the highest sacrifice a person has ever given for his nation” the NPCC said.
“The NPCC is of the strong view that heartless act of committing crimes by the anti-national elements and terrorists against humanity have no place in our civilized nation therefore, situation demands that our nation rise to the occasion unitedly (sic) to stem out the human menace of terrorism and violence from the face of our nation and world” the NPCC said. Congratulating the CM “for displaying your leadership capability and sagacity in tackling the issue with tenacity and firm hand” also conveys heartfelt sympathy and condolences to the bereaved families and wishes speedy recovery to the hundreds who sustained injuries.

Israeli experts say Indian forces acted prematurely

Jerusalem, November 28 (PTI): Indian Security forces were premature in storming the besieged prime premises taken over by the terrorists in Mumbai, Israeli security experts have opined. Criticising the handling of the hostage crisis, the experts said “Indians should have sanitized the area and first collected intelligence about the terrorists before launching flushing out operations,” a media report here said. “In hostage situations, the first thing the forces are supposed to do is assemble at the scene and begin collecting intelligence,” a former official in Israel’s famed anti-terror agency Shin Bet told ‘The Jerusalem Post’. “In this case, it appears that the forces showed up at the scene and immediately began exchanging fire with the terrorists instead of first taking control of the area,” he said. Defence officials told the daily that Israel was not planning on sending commando units but had offered the Indians any assistance they required.