ISRAEL: Chabad Rabbi and Israeli Defense Minister react to Mumbai attacks, more Israeli tourists arrive from India

Record ID: 1540274

  • Title: ISRAEL: Chabad Rabbi and Israeli Defense Minister react to Mumbai attacks, more Israeli tourists arrive from India
  • Date: 30th November 2008
  • Summary: JEWISH CHILDREN PLAYING
  • Embargoed: 15th December 2008 17:40
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVACW1Q0IV1WA2VMYL4OUMJIF4YV
  • Aspect Ratio: 4:3
  • Story Text: Chabad Rabbi and Israeli Defence Minister react to Mumbai attacks as Israeli tourists arrive from India.
    Commandos ended a three-day rampage by Islamist gunmen in Mumbai on Saturday, (November 29) gunning down the last of the militants who killed nearly 200 people in a strike on India's financial heart.
    A Brooklyn-based rabbi and his wife were killed in the siege on a Jewish centre in Mumbai as part of the coordinated attacks on India, their New York-based organization said on Friday (November 28).
    The New York-based Chabad-Lubavitch Movement said in a statement that Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, the directors of Chabad-Lubavitch of Mumbai, were killed during one of the worst terrorist attacks to strike India in recent memory.

    "We are all obviously pained and hurt and it is a very serious shock to the entire international Chabad world," Israel Brod at the Chabad Village, in Israel told Reuters on Saturday.
    Elite Black Cat commandos killed the remaining four militants after a running gunbattle through a maze of corridors, rooms and halls in Mumbai's best-known hotel, the Taj Mahal.
    Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak commented on the Indian military response to the attacks.

    "I'm not sure that this had to have gone on three days. As it happened, that's how it turned out. These hotels are huge, I stayed there more than two years ago. When a unit from the civil defence goes in and starts going floor to floor -- even the Chabad House too a whole day. People receive an order to lock themselves in their room, and they (police) look for two or three terrorists who are going floor to floor, shooting everywhere at people. It's a long story. The Indians, their forces they are not exactly the Israeli anti-terror unit. Their forces are not yet (off-screen 'They are not yet experienced?') Their police forces are the best, but they are not the level of the Israeli anti-terror unit or other elite Israeli military units," Barak stated on Israel's Channel 1 television programme.
    Israeli tourists continued to arrive from India at Israel's Ben Gurion airport on Saturday. One male passenger told reporters upon his arrival, "thank god. There were always gunshots, grenades. The fire reached the 19th floor. I saw the fire in front of my eyes. It reached me."
    The four militants were the last of 10 gunmen who attacked Mumbai's top two luxury hotels, its biggest railway station and several other symbols of India's financial might with grenades and assault rifles in a frenzy that began on Wednesday night.
    and assault rifles in a frenzy that began on Wednesday night.
    Hundreds of people, many of them Westerners, were trapped or taken hostage. Twenty-two of those killed were foreigners.
    Many guests, trapped in their rooms in the Taj Mahal while the battle raged around them, emerged to harrowing scenes after the killing of the militants in relentless gunfire.
    The gunmen had set parts of the 105-year-old hotel ablaze as they evaded scores of India's best-trained commandos. They left bodies in their wake, some with grenades stuffed into their mouths or concealed underneath.
    Nine of the gunmen were killed, a tenth caught alive. He told interrogators they wanted to go down in history for an Indian version of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Times Now TV said, quoting an unidentified defence ministry official.
    They were also inspired by the bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad in September, it said.
    The Taj Mahal was the last battleground after three days of intense fighting in various parts of the city of 18 million.
    Several newspapers said some of the militants had checked into the hotel days or weeks before the attacks, while the Times of India said they had rented an apartment in the city a few months ago pretending to be students.
    Late on Saturday, M.L. Kumawat, a senior official in India's Home Ministry, said the official toll was 183 killed, 20 of them police or soldiers. Earlier, Mumbai disaster authorities said at least 195 people had been killed and 295 wounded.
    The death toll rose as bodies were collected from the Taj and nearby Trident-Oberoi hotel, scene of another siege that ended on Friday.
    The attacks struck at the heart of Mumbai, the engine room of an economic boom that has made India a favourite emerging market with investors.
    It is also home to the "Bollywood" film industry, the epitome of glamour in a country blighted by poverty.
    The arrested man has confessed to being a member of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, which has long fought Indian forces in disputed Kashmir and was blamed for an attack on India's parliament in December 2001, newspapers said.
    Authorities said 22 foreigners were among the dead, including three Germans, three Israelis, one American, one Australian, a Briton, two Canadians, an Italian, a Japanese, a Singaporean, a Mauritian, a Thai and a Chinese national. Five were unidentified, they said.
    However, the U.S. State Department has said five Americans were killed while two French nationals are also known to have died. India denied reports any of the attackers were British.
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