There are Hindu extremists too aren’t there?
I was hearing from family that some Christians have been attacked and churches burned recently in Goa.
They’re probably home grown terrorists, rather than outsiders. India has lots of Muslims- well over 100 million.
In any event, they could also be Hindu, Sikh, Druze, Christian, Parsee (Zoroastrian), Buddhist (okay, unlikely), or ethnically/culturally rather than religiously driven (like the Tamil).
ETA: Started posting this before Szlater posted. But yeah, India has a wide variety of crazies. India leads the world in production of rice, tea, balsa wood, nutjobs and software programmers.
Hindu militants tend not to be “terrorists”, though - generally, they’re just mobs that go around beating up whoever they’re angry at and/or destroying mosques and the like.
Ahh, I didn’t realise that. Thanks.
That headline seems to be coming from the IBN film, which CNN is showing. I agree that it seems over the top, but AFACT it’s not CNN that’s saying it.
But they have a hot blonde anchor-woman. So I guess it evens up.
I was just past BBC and heard a journalist standing outside the hotel and who had been interviewing the police, and now commenting on BBC-live that she believes the police were making ready to storm the hotel with hostages. Sounds fairly irresponsible reporting to me. The terrorists might very well be watching BBC too, in which case she just blew any possible surprise advantage.
You know the economy is bad when Al Queda outsources terrorism to India.
No.
Yikes. If this thing is tied to Pakistan, it could lead to a shooting war between nuclear armed nations. Would also be very awkward for the U.S…
Here is one eyewitness video :
Other follow up vids will appear in the near future.
Said as if that hadn’t almost happened 2 or 3 years ago.
So what’s the debate, who did it? I’ll go out on a limb and say it is the followers of he-who-cannot-be-drawn".
Live streaming news from India:
http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/video_streaming.php
Currently reporting that 5 terrorists are dead, 9 captured.
87 people reported dead, 187 people wounded.
There are reports of some hostages and terrorists in some locations, sporadic gunfire still going on around and in the Oberoi and Taj hotels.
No trade in the Indian stock market, all schools and colleges are closed.
Remember, it’s a religion of peace.
9 allowed themselves to be captured alive? That’s pretty candyass for jihad types, isn’t it? No virgins in Paradise for them. Does India have a death penalty?
Hanging.
Good.
I’m in Bombay right now. Staying in the northern suburbs, far from all the ‘action’. My family is safe at home. The incidents are all centered in south Bombay, the financial and social hub of the city.
The shooting seemed to have started around 9:40 p.m. last night. By 10:15 p.m. the news channels had begun picking it up, and I finally heard about it at around 10:25 p.m. I watched the news till around 1:30 a.m., before falling asleep.
Till last night, there were firefights between the terrorists and the police at the VT station (bombay’s central station), the Taj Mahal Hotel and the Hilton Trident Hotel.
There were intermittent firefights near the Cama Hospital, before the situation exploded into another firefight at the very busy Metro multiplex. Terrorists drove up in a police van, fired indiscriminately and then drove off. No report on what happened to them.
Intermittent bomb blasts (probably grenades) heard across 6 other locations in the city. I have some family in the vicinity of those blasts - fortunately they’re all ok.
As of now (10:00 a.m.):
Hostage situation at the Taj Hotel. About 100 people still trapped, plus the hostages. People are being evacuated, even as commandos get ready to storm the hotel.
About 200 still trapped inside the Hilton, but they’re being evacuated slowly because of the firefights. Apparently, unexploded grenades are lying about in the hotel lobby.
Both hotels had big fires inside last night, but they seem to be put out now.
Some number of terrorists have holed up inside a building in Colaba, which incidentally is known to house Israelis (no news if this is significant). About 6 of these Israelis are also being held hostage.
5-6 terrorists are loose in the city.
The news channels are flashing pictures of some terrorists. They are not masked, look like in their mid-twenties. The news channels say 9 terrorists have been captured during the course of the night.
My anger is directed towards the terrorists and the local administration. We’ve had numerous terrorist attacks in Bombay in the past 3 years, and there is NO secutiry apparatus in place. They had to fly in commandos from Delhi, who arrived at 4:30 in the morning, 6 hours after it started. Fuckers.
I’m going back to watch TV now.
Good site for live world news for anyone interested :
This incident is spectacular in it’s size and coordination, but it’s not really that unexpected. Terrorism in India is almost routine. India has a billion people, hundreds of ethnic groups, every major religion, a simmering border war, separatists in nearly every state and one of the world’s widest gaps between rich and poor. Bombs go off somewhere almost weekly. There are fairly major incidents on almost a monthly basis. Things have been heating up in Mumbai for quite a while- the question was never “will there be a terror attack” but “when will the next set of bombs go off?”
It’s a little absurd to try to tie this to America. India- the world’s largest and most vibrant democracy- has been fighting the war against terror since the days when Americans considered terrorists to a quaint little third world problem. We like to think we invented terrorism on Sept. 11. But really there is a huge world out there that doesn’t revolve around us.
Gouda, goodness. I hope all goes well with you and your loved ones.
Glad that you and your family are alright. Thinking about everyone over there. My deepest sympathies.