Close to 24 hours after one of the most violent terror attacks on Indian soil, security forces were still engaged in a grim battle to flush out terrorists holed up at Oberoi Trident in south Mumbai. Another siege was in progress at Nariman House, an office building that houses a Jewish centre.
At least 125 people have been killed, including six foreigners, and 327 injured in the attack as terrorists used AK-47s and grenades to strike at the city’s high-profile areas. More than 200 people are still trapped as hostages or used as human shields, police said. There were heavy casualties among the staff in both the hotels with the Taj alone accounting for around 40 of them. The hotel general manager’s wife and two sons were also killed.
Military sources said while all the hostages in the Taj were evacuated to safety, one injured terrorist was still inside the hotel. Meanwhile, the situation in Trident has worsened. Late in the night, there was a major fire in the Trident after terrorists exploded grenades that set the roof ablaze. About 200 people are still trapped in the hotel.
Police said they had shot dead four gunmen and arrested nine suspects. They said 14 policemen were killed, including Hemant Karkare, the chief of the police anti-terrorist squad in Mumbai.
Elite commandoes of the topline security forces from army, navy, National Security Group (NSG) and Rapid Action Force (RAF) were involved in the raging encounter with 20-25 heavily-armed terrorists who set various floors on fire through grenade explosions throughout the day. The terrorists, all of whom are in their mid-20s, are believed to have come in three small inflatable boats, whose mother ship has been traced by Indian naval ships patrolling the Arabian Sea.
The militants armed with grenades and rifles had stormed into the Taj and the Trident at about 10 pm yesterday, saying they were targeting Americans and Britons. Shootings also occurred outside Cafe Leopold, in Colaba — a favourite among foreigners. Smoke was seen billowing out of both the hotels and TV channels reported blasts inside the hotels, indicating that the war on Mumbai will still take some time to be won.
Hotel staff were seen evacuating the wounded on luggage trolleys, with passers-by covered in blood after they rushed to help. Some clambered down ladders to safety. Among them were top executives of Unilever and its Indian subsidiary, Hindustan Lever.
Schools were closed and a curfew was imposed around the Gateway of India. All offices in South Mumbai were also closed. But the equity and the commodity markets, which were shut today, are set to reopen tomorrow. Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh told reporters in the afternoon that he has asked the state chief secretary to make sure that the markets reopen tomorrow.
All flights were, however, on schedule and train services were normal.
In a televised address to the nation in the afternoon, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India will “go after” individuals and organisations behind the attacks, which were “well-planned with external linkages”.
Singh, who visited Mumbai around 8 pm along with Congress President Sonia Gandhi, spent about 45 minutes with the victims at the St George Hospital in South Mumbai.
There is unanimity in the government that the events in Mumbai were orchestrated by the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), a Jihadi group especially active in Kashmir that has been backed by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan from time to time.
Two ships MV Alfa and MV Al Kabir allegedly came from Karachi and probably dropped the terrorists in speed boats in the Arabian Sea outside Indian territorial waters. A militant inside the Trident told a TV channel that the Indian government must release all Mujahideens, and Muslims living in India should not be troubled.
Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil told Cabinet today that those who masterminded the worst terrorist attack in the history of India had been preparing for the event for nearly a month, holed up in Mumbai.
He also said that the two hotels where the attacks took place were used as control rooms for weapons and logistics management. “Some of the terrorists had turned the hotel rooms into control rooms,” Patil told Cabinet this morning.
This squares with the assessment of intelligence agencies all over the world that rushed to offer India assistance and resources. The first to call with the offer was US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The line of enquiry that the US is pursuing is on the basis of picture credit cards found on militants who were gunned down.
A theory they are pursuing, on the basis of data mined from credit card details, is that the militants had registered as guests in the hotel and made it a storehouse for their weapons, taking advantage of largely ornamental security. This is borne out by the fact that once the Taj had been emptied of terrorists and hostages released, the security agencies broke down a number of rooms to find no one inside.
The process of reconciling credit card payments with hotel bookings is still going on. The nexus between the Mumbai underworld and these groups is also being probed, especially given the circumstances in which three top Mumbai policemen charged with investigating the underworld were shot. Only a trained sharpshooter with connections on the inside could have done such a neat job, intelligence officials say.
Intelligence assessments concur that an operation of this nature and scale could not have been carried out without local support. One reconstruction suggests that in the case of the Taj, the terrorists came in from a poorly guarded entrance near the hotel’s pastry shop and gym, having previously stashed weapons inside the hotel. This needed some local assistance.
The attacks, the worst in the city since train blasts in July 2006, began with explosions and gunfire ringing out across the city last night. Armed with AK-47 rifles and grenades, two terrorists entered the passenger hall of Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and opened fire. Images on television showed blood-spattered luggage strewn across the floor.
Police officials said targeting foreign nationals at key hotels and restaurants adds a new dimension to a wave of bombings in the country this year that has killed more than 300 people. Multiple attacks have rocked India’s cities with bombs planted in markets, theatres and near mosques.
US President-elect Barack Obama led global condemnation of the attacks as his transition team said the US would work with “India and nations around the world to root out and destroy terrorist networks”. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the “outrageous” attacks in India would be met with a “vigorous response.”
Sources in the ministry of external affairs said the government of India was of the view that the Pakistan government had lost all control over militant and jihadi elements, and did not really suspect the Pakistan government of official involvement.
