Saturday, November 29, 2008

Mumbai Attacked By Sea

India's 9/11 has dominated all news channels since late Wednesday when young men in jeans and t-shirts and AK-47 assault rifles began terrorizing Mumbai. Now that the fires have been put out, the last gunmen killed or apprehended and bodies counted, the question remains: Why Mumbai? Aljazeera points out that the terrorists reached the urban peninsula by boat -- "the first time that the sea route was exploisted for access" -- and suggests that the government's total reliance on technological intelligence-gathering may be why Indian intelligence agencies didn't anticipate an attack of this size and incredible organization. It is clear that intelligence officials across the world will have to develop better coordination to battle against such attacks, says the Aljazeera report, adding that the root causes of such assaults must be addressed. What message did the gunmen deliver?

2 comments:

Hamda said...

This is so sad, when I saw this in the news it really broke my heart. Gunmen who were at the Taj were targeting foreigners. They kept shouting: `Who has U.S. or U.K. passports?’ 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. There was no way to verify the claim. A british man was dining in one of the restaurants, suddenly one of the gunmen came in and started screaming to an Italian guy. They asked him if he was from the US or UK, he said that he was Italian so the gunmen left him alone. It was the british man’s lucky day he managed to get out of this, because the gunmen didn’t suspect him.

There is a video of this breaking news that I found online.
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=94512&feedType=VideoRSS&feedName=TopNews&videoChannel=1

I got my information from this website, there is more to know for the story, and everything is covered here.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081126/ap_on_re_as/as_india_shooting

Nancy Beth Jackson said...

So sad, too, because they were targeting everyone. Post-rampage coverage on Yahoo (a news aggregator instead of news organization) is even more disturbing. Ten young men, arriving on a beach in a rubber boat, did it all. A Time magazine article I read on Yahoo said one was smiling as he took aim at a crowd.