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Gunmen On 'Suicide Mission' Attack Mumbai Last Week, Killing 188 People And Injuring More Than 300By Joshi Pathak, Section Suicide Bombers  'In our view this was a suicide mission,' Mumbai city police chief Hassan Gafoor told a packed news conference, adding that the militants aimed to 'create a sensation and kill as many people as possible'. A total of 10 militants claiming to be from a group called the Deccan Mujahedeen attacked a number of locations in India's financial capital late last Wednesday, including the iconic seafront Taj Mahal hotel.
Mr Gafoor said the heavily-armed attackers, who fired indiscriminately and lobbed grenades at landmark sites in the south of the city, arrived by boat from Karachi, Mumbai's sister city in Pakistan, after hijacking a trawler.  India has pointed the finger at its arch-rival and neighbour, raising tensions between the two nuclear-armed nations. But Islamabad is demanding concrete evidence that the attackers were from Pakistan. Mr Gafoor told reporters in a mix of English, Hindi and the local language Marathi: 'We have hard evidence to show that they are from Pakistan.' The only militant detained in the attacks was 'certainly from Pakistan", he added. CNN and other US networks reported that the United States had warned India in October that hotels and business centres in Mumbai would be targeted by attackers coming from the sea. Click On "Full Story" for More...
One US intelligence official had named the Taj Mahal hotel, one of 10 sites hit in the 60-hour siege by gunmen, as a specific target, ABC television said.
Asked about the reports, the police chief said: 'Like the blast at the Marriott (hotel in Islamabad) we had an alert that hotels like Taj could be exposed to such danger.' The September 20 attack was carried out by a suicide bomber in a dumper truck who detonated 600kg of explosives outside the Marriott hotel, killing at least 60 people and wounding more than 260. Mr Gafoor declined to comment further about the warnings but said that the investigation into the attacks was 'at an advanced stage'. Information was being shared with other intelligence agencies around the world, including the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), he said. Source: www.straitstimes.com 03/Dec/2008
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