Times of India: Deccan Mujahideen email threatens Delhi

According to police sources, Deccan Mujahideen has warned of a repeat of Mumbai terror attack at Indira Gandhi International Airport and three railway stations.

Times of India: 3 RDX bombs found around Taj and Trident

The scope of the terror attack on Mumbai was much wider, The Times of India has reliably learnt. The neighbourhood around the Taj would have been blown to smithereens if two RDX bombs fitted with timers had gone off. A third bomb placed near the entrance of the Oberoi Trident exploded, but the bomb disposal squad put a cover on it, substantially reducing the impact. According to highly-placed sources, the bomb disposal squad found the two bombs and defused them in time, hours after the terrorists took over the Taj on Wednesday night.

Rediff.com: Doctors shocked at hostages’s torture

They said that just one look at the bodies of the dead hostages as well as terrorists showed it was a battle of attrition that was fought over three days at the Oberoi and the Taj hotels in Mumbai.

Doctors working in a hospital where all the bodies, including that of the terrorists, were taken said they had not seen anything like this in their lives.

“Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing,” a doctor said.

Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: “It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim’s body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words,” he said.

Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: “It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood,” one doctor said.

The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: “Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again,” he said.

Corroborating the doctors’ claims about torture was the information that the Intelligence Bureau had about the terror plan. “During his interrogation, Ajmal Kamal said they were specifically asked to target the foreigners, especially the Israelis,” an IB source said.

It is also said that the Israeli hostages were killed on the first day as keeping them hostage for too long would have focused too much international attention. “They also might have feared the chances of Israeli security agencies taking over the operations at the Nariman House,” he reasoned.

After discussing the above article along with another, Israel Matzav concludes:

With over a billion people living in India, the terrorists sought out the most visible of its 5,000 Jews. That’s because there is no hatred in the world like Jew-hatred, and today’s Islamists are as expert practitioners as their European forebears. Jew-hatred has nothing to do with the State of Israel or any rational grievance against the Jewish people. It is the oldest hatred in the books. And it’s not going to go away even if the Jews were to leave Israel for other parts of the world.

It’s time to face reality.

Jerusalem Post: ‘Indian commandos may have killed some Chabad hostages’

The Indian commando raid launched to save the lives of Jewish and Israeli hostages at Mumbai’s Chabad House may have inadvertently ended the lives of one or more of the hostages, the head of a six-man ZAKA team in the terror-stricken Indian city told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

Speaking by phone from Mumbai, Haim Weingarten, the head of the Mumbai ZAKA team, said, “Based on what I saw, [although] I can’t identify the type of bullets in the bodies [of the victims], I don’t think the terrorists killed all the hostages, to put it gently.”

[snip]

ZAKA officials believe that in a final act of love, the director of the Chabad House, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, wrapped the body of his wife Rivka in a tallit before succumbing to his own wounds during the final hours of the siege.

ZAKA volunteers on the scene found the bodies of Israeli grandmother Yocheved Orpaz, 62, and Jewish Mexican national Norma Shvarzblat Rabinovich, 50, bound to one another with a phone cord.

Members of the ZAKA team found the bodies of six Jewish hostages at the Chabad House minutes after a two-day raid by Indian commandos ended on Saturday. However, Indian security forces ordered them out of the building before they could remove the bodies, fearing they would step on grenades scattered throughout the facility. The security forces allowed them to return only hours later.

Based on observations of the bodies, ZAKA officials estimate that Rabbi Holtzberg was the last to die. They placed his death close to the time that Indian commandos, who were dropped onto the roof on Friday morning, fought their way down the multi-floor building.

Holtzberg’s body was found close to the tallit-wrapped body of his wife, Rivka, ZAKA officials said, adding that he may have managed to hide and survive long enough to wrap his wife. They did not know whether Holtzberg had succumbed to wounds sustained earlier or whether he was killed on Friday. The remaining hostages were killed by the terrorists during the previous two days, according to their estimates.