Mumbai Attacks – Tenth Anniversary

December 7, 2018

Its been ten years but Mumbai still remains vulnerable

The 2008 Mumbai attacks were a series of 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks lasting four days across Mumbai, perpetrated by 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic terrorist organisation based in Pakistan. The attacks, which drew widespread global condemnation, began on Wednesday 26 November and lasted until Saturday 29 November 2008. At least 174 people died, including 9 attackers, and more than 300 were wounded.

Eight of the attacks occurred in South Mumbai at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, The Oberoi Trident, The Taj Palace & Tower, Leopold Cafe, Cama Hospital, The Nariman House Jewish community centre, the Metro Cinema, and in a lane behind the Times of India building and St. Xavier’s College. There was also an explosion at Mazagaon, in Mumbai’s port area, and in a taxi at Vile Parle. By the early morning of 28 November, all sites except for the Taj Hotel had been secured by the Mumbai Police Department and security forces. On 29 November, India’s National Security Guards (NSG) conducted ‘Operation Black Tornado’ to flush out the remaining attackers; it culminated in the death of the last remaining attackers
at the Taj Hotel and ended the attacks.

The attacks are sometimes referred to in India as “26/11”, after the date in 2008 that the attacks began, in similar style to the 9/11 attacks in the United States. The Maharashtra government planned to buy 36 speed boats to patrol the coastal areas and several helicopters for the same purpose, as these attackers had entered Mumbai through the Arabian Sea. A new National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) was proposed to be set up by the then-Home Minister P. Chidambaram as an office to collect, collate, summarise, integrate, analyse, co-ordinate and report all information and inputs received from various intelligence agencies, state police departments, and other ministries and their departments.

The main perpetrator, Ajmal Kasab who was caught then, was hanged on 21 November 2012 at 7:30 am and buried at Yerwada Jail in Pune.