Three Lashkar fidayeen
captured; Security stepped up across country
New Delhi, November 28, 2008
India Govt.in
Maharashtra Police investigators say they have evidence that
operatives of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba carried out the
fidayeen-squad attacks in Mumbai - a charge which, if proven,
could have far-reaching consequences for India-Pakistan relations.
Police sources said an injured terrorist captured during the
fighting at the Taj Mahal hotel was tentatively identified as
Ajmal Amir Kamal, a resident of Faridkot, near Multan, in Pakistan’s
Punjab province.
Highly-placed police sources said two other Pakistani nationals
had also been held in the course of intense fighting on Thursday.
All three, the sources said, identified themselves as members
of a Lashkar fidayeen squad.
Based on the interrogation of the suspects, the investigators
believe that one or more groups of Lashkar operatives left Karachi
in a merchant ship early on Wednesday.
Late that night, an estimated 12 fidayeen left the ship in a
small boat and rowed some 10 nautical miles to Mumbai’s
Gateway of India area.
The investigators say the fidayeen unit of which Mr. Kamal was
a part then split up into at least six groups, each focussing
on a separate target:
Mumbai’s Nariman House, which is home to a large number
of Israeli families and a Jewish prayer house; the Chhatrapati
Shivaji Terminus rail station; the Cama hospital; the Girgaum
seafront; and the Taj and Trident Oberoi hotels.
Meanwhile, Intensified checkings and patrolling were being carried
out at bus terminals, railway stations, airport, cinema halls
and other public places.
Hotel authorities were also asked to step up security at their
establishments.
In the national capital that witnessed a serial blast in September,
policemen have been deployed in full strength.
The city is going to polls on Saturday.
"Our men have been briefed about the situation. We have
strengthened the security by having maximum deployment. Checkings
are being conducted at public places," a senior Delhi Police
official said.
Leaving nothing to chance, security has also been stepped up
at railway and Metro stations, inter-state bus terminals, airport,
cinema halls, shopping malls and other sensitive points, he said.
Police personnel were deployed across Tamil Nadu at places, including
hotels and places of worship, where people congregate.
A meeting of top police officials of the state was held on Thursday
night. "We have taken certain decision regarding security
and we are keen that they are implemented to the best," DGP
K P Jain said.
In star hotels and railway stations, Jain said, "we have
ensured more physical presence of police."
In Kerala, security has been strengthened across the state, especially
at Sabarimala temple where thousands of devotees are pouring in,
as the annual pilgrimage is on.
Authorities beefed up vigilance at all levels in Pune as terrorists
struck ten places in south Mumbai which led to closure of many
schools on Thursday.
Joint Commissioner of Police, Pune Rajendra Sonavne appealed
to citizens to ignore rumours and go about their daily chores
without reservations.
However, the terror strikes had a little impact on the normal
life of this satellite city which has emerged as one of the centres
of suspected terrorist activity in various forms.
Police had stepped up patrolling throughout the city covering
important junctions as well as five-star hotels.
An alert has been sounded in Andhra Pradesh, too, where security
has been tightened at all vital institutions and famous temples,
besides railway and bus stations, police said.
A Red alert has been issued in Karnataka as well.
Two terrorists captured
are British nationals: Reports
Agencies
November 28, 2008, 22:01
British newspaper, Daily Mail, has reported that two of the terrorists
captured by Indian security forces are British nationals of Pakistani
origin.
Attributing to sources in the Maharashtra government, the paper
claimed that as many as eight terrorists were captured by the
National Security Guards (NSG) commandos during the raids on Taj
and Oberoi-Trident hotels.
Among the captured two happened to be British born Pakistanis
The Daily Mail also said that the British Security Services were
studying images of the attackers that have appeared in the media
in an effort to identify them.
The British Prime minister Gordon Brown meanwhile said on Friday
it was 'too early' to reach any conclusions about British involvement.
The paper also reports that as many as nine terrorists have been
confirmed killed in gun battles with the NSG, which were still
ongoing today.
Daily Mail’s report further elaborated that three terrorists
arrested at the Taj Mahal hotel have been officially identified
as a Pakistani national and two Indians.
It claimed that the Indian authorities have not released any
details about the two Britons and the Foreign Office has refused
to confirm.
However, a team of Scotland Yard anti-terrorist detectives and
negotiators are now on their way to Mumbai to assist the Indian
intelligence officers. Interstingly, another of the detainees
is reported to be a Mauritian national.
Hostages said dead in
Mumbai Jewish center
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Yahoo! Bookmarks Print By RAVI NESSMAN, Associated Press Writer
Ravi Nessman, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 5 mins ago
MUMBAI, India – Commandos who stormed the Mumbai headquarters
of an ultra-orthodox Jewish group found the bodies of five hostages
inside, including a New York rabbi and his wife, 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 — four 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.
The airborne assault on the center run by the Jewish outreach
group Chabad Lubavitch was punctuated by gunshots and explosions
as forces cleared it floor by floor.
Late Friday, Rabbi Zalman Schmotkin, a spokesman for the Chabad
Lubavitch movement, said that Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and
his wife, Rivka, were among the dead.
The couple's toddler son, Moshe Holtzberg, was smuggled out of
the center by an employee, and is now with his grandparents.
By Friday evening, at least nine gunmen had been killed and one
had been arrested, said R. Patil, a top official in Maharashtra
state, where Mumbai is the capital. Media reports said one or
two were thought to still be in the Taj Mahal.
Patil said a total of 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.
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.
Early Friday, Thamburaj, the security official, said at least
one gunman was still alive inside the hotel and had cut of electricity
on the floor where he was hiding. Shortly after that announcement,
another round of explosions and gunfire were heard coming from
the hotel.
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. India has
long accused Islamabad of allowing militant Muslim groups, particularly
those fighting in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, to
train and take shelter in Pakistan. Mukherjee's carefully phrased
comments appeared to indicate he was accusing Pakistan-based groups
of staging the attack, and not Pakistan itself.
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.
They also stopped a cargo ship that had come to Mumbai from Karachi,
Pakistan, but released it when nothing suspicious was found on
board.
The British government, meanwhile, was investigating whether
some of the attackers could be British citizens with links to
Pakistan or the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, a British
security official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity
because of the sensitivity of his work.
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. One
backpack they found had 400 rounds of ammunition inside.
He said the Taj was filled with terrified civilians, making it
very difficult for the commandos to fire on the gunmen.
"To try and avoid civilian casualties we had to be so much
more careful," he said, adding that hotel was a grim sight.
"Bodies were strewn all over the place, and there was blood
everywhere."
A U.S. investigative team was heading to Mumbai, a State Department
official said Thursday evening, speaking on condition of anonymity
because the U.S. and Indian governments were still working out
final details.
India has been shaken repeatedly by terror attacks blamed on
Muslim militants in recent years, but most were bombings striking
crowded places: markets, street corners, parks. Mumbai —
one of the most populated cities in the world with some 18 million
people — was hit by a series of bombings in July 2006 that
killed 187 people.
These attacks were more sophisticated — and more brazen.
They began at about 9:20 p.m. with shooters spraying gunfire
across the Chhatrapati Shivaji railroad station, one of the world's
busiest terminals. For the next two hours, there was an attack
roughly every 15 minutes — the Jewish center, a tourist
restaurant, one hotel, then another, and two attacks on hospitals.
There were 10 targets in all.
___
Associated Press writers Ramola Talwar Badam, Erika Kinetz, Anita
Chang and Jenny Barchfield contributed to this report.
Security forces secure
Oberoi, Nariman House, firing on at Taj
Kapil Kelkar and Shruti Ganpatye, Press Trust Of India
Mumbai, November 28, 2008
First Published: 12:35 IST(28/11/2008)
Last Updated: 23:11 IST(28/11/2008)
The terror war 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.
At the Centre, a residential complex housing a prayer hall, commandos
were air dropped from helicopters in first such operation in urban
India the security forces spent the entire day to clear it. Two
terrorists were killed but not before five of the hostages were
eliminated by them.
A clean-up operation was still on late tonight at the Centre
where the victims reportedly included the Rabbi and his wife.
The might of the Indian security forces had to be brought in
to rid these landmarks in the country's financial capital of the
heavily-armed suspected Pakistani terrorists who seized the two
hotels and the Centre on Wednesday night, but the costs were heavy
on both sides.
When the Oberoi was cleared of the terrorists this afternoon,
as many as 30 hostages were found dead raising the toll in the
worst terrorist strike against India to over 160 including 16
security personnel. 11 terrorists were also eliminated, one was
captured and one, possibly two, were still inside the Taj.
"The Oberoi-Trident is totally clear of terrorists and is
now under our control. The two terrorists holed up there have
been killed," NSG Director General J K Dutt told reporters
outside the hotel in south Mumbai after more than a day of fierce
exchange of fire between his commandos and terrorists.
"We are sanitising every room to make sure no undesirable
elements are there and relief can be provided to guests there,"
Dutt said.
Twentyfour bodies were found in the search operations in Oberoi
hotel, Police Commissioner Hasan Ghafur told reporters adding
six hostages were killed on Wednesday by the terrorists under
a staircase while taking them to the roof.
While the 34-floor Trident has 541 rooms, the adjacent 11-storeyed
Oberoi has 327 rooms.
At the 565-room Taj, commandoes continued to be engaged in fierce
exchange of fire with a militant who is believed to be moving
between floors. "We are trying to corner him," Dutt
said.
The NSG has recovered two AK-47 assault rifles, one 9 mm pistol
and some unexploded grenades.
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil said nine terrorists
have been killed and one arrested.
The arrested terrorist is a Pakistani national and the state
police has acquired a lot of information about the whole plan
for the strikes.
ML Kumawat, Secretary (internal Security) in the Union Home Ministry,
told reproters in Delhi that Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan of the
NSG was killed during the encounter with terrorists in Taj while
another commando Omkar Chander was killed in Nariman House.
He said a 60-member fresh contingent of NSG commandos was dispatched
from Delhi today in addition to two contingents already there.
475 commandos are engaged in the operations.
"It is just a matter of a few hours before we will be able
to wrap up things," Southern Command Chief Lt Gen Noble Thamburaj
told reporters in Mumbai outside Taj hotel as 35 hostages, including
foreigners and a six-month old infant, were successfully rescued
from Oberoi-Trident.
The new building of Taj hotel has been totally flushed out and
cleared and handed over to police, he said adding that one terrrorist,
possibly two, had moved into the adjacent old heritage building.
"We have heard the sound of a woman and a man, giving indications
that they are being held hostage," Thamburaj said but added
that almost all guests and staff in the hotel have been evacuated.