Mumbai gunman goes on TV to justify terror attacks

Taken from Sydney morning Herald, Australia
November 27, 2008

One of the gunmen involved in terrorist blasts in Mumbai told a television channel he belonged to an Indian Islamist group seeking an end to the persecution of Indian Muslims.

Identifying himself as a member of a group calling itself Deccan Mujahedeen, the gunman, who was holed up in the Oberoi Trident Hotel, called for the release of all fellow Islamic militants detained in India.



"Muslims in India should not be persecuted. We love this as our country but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?" he told the India TV channel by phone from inside the hotel, which is surrounded by army commandos.

Up to 100 people were killed and about 100 more wounded in the attacks, Indian media reported.

The luxury Taj Mahal and Oberoi Trident hotels and eight other locations across Mumbai, including the train station, a hospital and an up-market restaurant were hit in precisely-timed assaults by small groups of gunmen who lobbed grenades into crowds and opened fire with AK-47s on people as they fled.

Maharashtra Director General of Police A N Roy was quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying that about 100 people were dead.

The NDTV news channel put the death toll at 100, with 110 injured in the ongoing violence. The IBN Live channel said at least 87 people were dead. The Times of India was reporting up to 900 injured.

Two Australians - Katie Anstee, 24, and her boyfriend David Coker, 23 - were among the injured as they dineed at Cafe Leopold, and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told parliament today the number of Australian casualties could rise.

Australia's Islamic leaders have condemned the attacks.

President of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils Ikebal Adam Patel said he learned of the atrocity with shock and dismay and condemned the Mumbai attacks as abhorrent, despicable and outrageous.

He said attacks against innocent people were abhorrent to all peaceful people and to all faiths. He stressed that Islam does not preach acts of terrorism and rightly condemns those who do, even if they are Muslims.

Witnesses said the gunmen had specifically chosen US and British citizens to take hostage, and some foreign tourists are reported to be among the dead, including one Japanese man. A Briton who was dining at the Oberoi hotel also said the gunmen there singled out Britons and Americans.

"They were talking about British and Americans specifically,'' Alex Chamberlain told Sky News. One of 12 members of a 20-strong NSW trade delegation is unaccounted for and other members of the delegation are trapped in hotel rooms with gunmen taking hostages outside.

Officials were checking with local authorities and hotel owners to determine exactly how many Australians had been caught up in the incidents, he said.

One terrified Australian is former Neighbours actress Brooke Satchwell, who is trapped with her boyfriend.

Rabbi taken hostage
A Jewish rabbi and his family have been taken hostage, India's Jewish Federation said. "The name of the place is Chabad house in South Mumbai. I hear commandos are storming the apartment block, which is a four-storey building. A rabbi is in there with his family," Indian Jewish Federation chairman Jonathan Solomon said.

"I don't know the number of gunmen in there. I don't know how many family members are in there," he added.

Meanwhile, as mainstream media outlets struggled to contend with the enormity of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, citizen journalists were already on the scene filing a constant stream of reports and images from the ground.

Every moment of the attacks has been documented in harrowing detail on Twitter, with new messages published from mobile phones every second as people described the scenes around them.

A little-known Islamic group, the Islamic Security Force-Indian Mujahedeen, claimed responsibility for serial blasts last month in India's northeast state of Assam that claimed nearly 80 lives.

Six weeks earlier, the capital New Delhi had been hit by a series of bombs in crowded markets that left more than 20 dead. Those blasts were claimed by a group calling itself the Indian Mujahedeen.