Mumbai attacks: India raises security footing to 'war level'

[BanglaBhoot]

India will increase security in the country and on its borders to a "war level" in the wake of the deadly attacks in Mumbai that have been blamed on militants linked to Pakistan, a government minister said.

The only one of the gunmen captured alive is believed to be from Pakistan and India claims to have proof of a Pakistani link to the Mumbai attacks.

In response to a string of public accusations from Delhi, officials in Islamabad said troops could be moved to the Indian border if relations continue to deteriorate.

"Our intelligence will be increased to a war level, we are asking the state governments to increase security to a war level," Sriprakash Jaiswal, India's minister for state for home affairs, told Reuters.

"They can say what they want, but we have no doubt that the terrorists had come from Pakistan," Mr Jaiswal said.

Earlier federal Home Minister Shivraj Patil submitted his resignation following anger over the delayed response to the attacks.

India has already boosted coastal security with the Indian Navy and the coast guard carrying out coordination patrols.

The Mumbai attackers are said to have come to the city by sea from the Pakistani port of Karachi, according to security officials.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba a Pakistan-based group that has been blamed for previous attacks in India has been identified by the Indian authorities as responsible for the massacres which left at least 174 people dead.

Indian commandos said the attackers had demonstrated professional techniques, firing in short bursts, setting traps and even stocking up with almonds and dried fruit to keep their energy up during the fighting.

Commandos brought 300 survivors out of the five-star Taj Mahal Palace hotel, where the siege ended early yesterday. Some 250 others were rescued from the Oberoi-Trident hotel and 60 people were brought out of the Jewish centre.

Those rescued included a British couple who were among a group of six people who hid for six hours in a toilet cubicle at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel. At one stage, the terrorists searched the darkened area with a torch but did not see or hear them huddled together.

The Pakistani Government yesterday denied involvement in the terror plot and has promised to help in the investigation. Asif Ali Zardari, the President, pledged to act swiftly if given any evidence of involvement by Pakistani nationals. "As president of Pakistan, if any evidence comes of any individual or group in any part of my country, I shall take the swiftest of action in the light of evidence and in front of the world," he said.

A team of British police and security officers is also in Mumbai to help with the inquiry, along with American FBI agents.

Gordon Brown said yesterday that the attack had raised "huge questions" about how the world should address violent extremism.

Speaking in London, the Prime Minister said: "A great multi-faithed democracy has been laid low by terrorists. It raises huge questions about how the world addresses violent extremism."

Fires, explosions and gun battles during the siege devastated the 105-year-old Taj Mahal Palace hotel. At the height of fighting, hundreds of people, many of them Westerners, were trapped or taken hostage.

Television pictures of a satellite telephone captured from a terrorist appeared to show a constant stream of calls to Pakistan during the operation. Officials also said they had traced the group's route from recorded GPS co-ordinates on the devices.

The group sent eight operatives on a reconnaissance mission to Mumbai earlier this year, Indian officials have claimed.

Security officials, Scotland Yard and diplomats in Britain played down reports yesterday of a British link to the terror plot. A spokesman for the Foreign Office said: "We have been speaking to the Indian authorities at a high level and they say there is no evidence that any of the attackers are British."

Mumbai attacks: India raises security footing to 'war level' - Telegraph

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Pakistan Tensions Increase in Aftermath of Attack

ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani canceled a scheduled trip to Hong Kong this week in order to deal with the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks and rising tensions with India, officials said.

Despite the Pakistan government's condemnation of the attacks and India's request for intelligence sharing, the two nuclear-armed rivals have seen an increase in friction after Indian government officials suggested that the Mumbai terrorists had links to Pakistan.

On Saturday, a senior Pakistani security official warned that troops would be diverted from its war against al Qaeda and Taliban militants and deployed on the Indian border if Pakistan felt threatened by its neighbor. The official accused India of heightening tension by blaming "elements from Pakistan" for the coordinated attacks against Indian commercial capital that officials said killed 174 people – revising down an earlier estimate of 195 killed.

"The next 48 hours are critical in determining how things unfold," the top security official told a group of journalists. He said the war on terror would not be Pakistan's priority in the event of India military buildup on eastern borders.

In a sign of how volatile and complex the relationship can be, the official told reporters that India's air force was now on high alert. But a spokesman at India's Ministry of Defence said: "There are no such reports from the Indian government side about the Indian Air Force being on high alert."

Indian officials see Pakistan's complicity for the worst terrorist attacks on their soil which they said were carried out by Islamic militants with links to Pakistan. Pakistan has demanded that India present hard evidence and has strenuously condemned the attacks. President Asif Ali Zardari also said that nobody backed by Pakistani state was involved.

"If they have evidence they should share it with us," Pakistan's foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Saturday on his return from Delhi. "Our hands are clean."

Pakistan also backed off a pledge made Friday to send the chief of its Inter Services Intelligence agency in person. Pakistan's top civil and military leaders met on Saturday night to discuss the unfolding situation. It now appears likely an ISI will visit Delhi instead.

Pakistan said it was willing to help India into the investigation into last week's grisly attacks and share intelligence, but will not be brow beaten. Mr. Zardari on Saturday warned India of any "over reaction" and vowed to take action against Islamic militant group found involved in the attack.

Pakistan has deployed more than 100,000 troops on the border with Afghanistan and is fighting a bloody war in the lawless tribal areas which have become the main battle ground for al Qaeda and Taliban militants. Pakistan is a key ally in the war on terror and the threat of withdrawal would alarm the U.S. as it could seriously hamper NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan. "We will not leave a single troop on the western border if we are threatened by India," said the security official.

India and Pakistan had fought three wars since they achieved independence and were on the brink of fighting another on three occasions. An attack on the Indian parliament by suspected militant groups in December 2001 brought the two nations close to a nuclear war which was averted by intervention from the U.S.

Pakistan is facing a serious economic crisis and terrorist attacks present most serious threat to the country's internal security. "It is not an ideal situation to go to war, but we will have no choice but to defend ourselves if threatened by India," the security official said.

Pakistan Tensions Increase in Aftermath of Attack - WSJ.com

 

[pkpatriotic]

Thoughts on the Mumbai attacks
By Paul Woodward, November 30, 2008

Was this India’s 9/11? The best way of answer that is to try and imagine if this had happened in New York City.

I suspect that three days of carnage like this would have been even more deeply traumatic for New Yorkers than were the actual 9/11 attacks — and I also think such an attack could have gone on for a lot longer. The gunmen would likely have had higher quality weaponry (easily available on the US gun market) and security services would have been much more cautious than their Indian counterparts in trying to avoid civilian casualties. The 24-hour cable network news coverage would have been breathtakingly sensational.

The intelligence failure: Predictably, this is being described as India’s intelligence failure — wrong. This is America’s intelligence failure. If the US intelligence apparatus with its global reach and its heightened focus on Pakistan didn’t see this coming, let’s not delude ourselves by imagining that it would have been thwarted in the event that the target had not been India, but had been closer to home.

Pakistan. The reflex for India to blame Pakistan is so habitual it has the effect of provoking the opposite reaction among observers, namely, to conclude that the Indian government must be intent on shifting attention away from its domestic problems. In this case, however, this type of political analysis does not stand up against the evidence. The evidence overwhelmingly points in the direction of Pakistan.

We know that some or all of the attackers landed by dinghy and came off a trawler believed to have originated from Karachi. They were heavily armed and supplied with large quantities of ammunition and most importantly had not only the ideological zeal to embark on a suicidal mission, but the Mumbai Perpetrators Showed Combat Training to engage in several days of fighting. Not only that, but they carried multiple forms of identification and had been provided with detailed intelligence. For instance, according to security analyst Sunil Ram (listen to his analysis that follows a short AP video news report here), the attacks occurred during a security “trough” in the days immediately following a relaxation of security levels at Mumbai’s hotels. Having entered the Taj hotel they were able to quickly secure the CCTV control room through which they could monitor the whole building and they were able to fend off the Indian commandos from this strategic position.

The Sunday Times reported:

RR Patil, the deputy chief minister of Mumbai’s state government, said there was “proof” that the terrorists were on the phone to someone in Pakistan during the attack.

“All phone calls made by them were tapped. They were being instructed from outside regarding their movement inside the hotel - whether to go upstairs or come down or make a move left or right,” he said…

Kasav [the sole surviving gunman], who speaks fluent English, told investigators he and his fellow terrorists had trained at a camp at the Mangla dam between Pakistani Punjab and Pakistan-held Kashmir.

The group had travelled in pairs to Karachi where they boarded a boat. They had been told not to talk to each other on the journey.

Strategic implications. This is what seems to clinch the argument that this was an operation that not only emanated from Pakistan but was most likely conceived by elements inside the ISI.

At face value we have what looks like the kind of nihilistic mayhem that we’ve come to expect from individuals whose ideological zeal is far stronger than their affiliation to a localized political cause.

In fact, what we witnessed was a major move on President-elect Obama’s chessboard of foreign policy even before he’d had a chance to lay a finger on any of the pieces.

The Obama team has made it known that it wants to push for reconciliation between India and Pakistan so that Pakistani forces focused on Kashmir can be freed up to operate in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas bordering Afghanistan. The effect of the Mumbai attacks has been to accomplish the opposite as Pakistan Tensions Increase in Aftermath of Attack.

As Tony Karon writes in The National:

Police work typically begins with the question of motive, and this is plain: a ratcheting up of Indo-Pakistani tensions, possibly even threatening confrontation along traditional fault lines in Kashmir and elsewhere. The beneficiaries of an escalation of tension would be all those whose interests are threatened by Indo-Pak rapprochement – al Qa’eda and the Pakistani Taliban elements coming under sustained attack by Pakistani and US forces along the Afghan border; and hard-core elements of the military and intelligence community whose political DNA is orientated towards confrontation with India.

Not only would the Islamist militants want to reorient the Pakistani military away from counterinsurgency and towards confrontation with India – their common enemy – but so would elements in the military and intelligence services, who are hostile to deploying the army against the Taliban and who see the jihadi proxies as a key element of a continuing strategic rivalry with India.

Provoking India would not only realign the interests of the Pakistani military and the Islamists, it would threaten US efforts to reorient the Pakistani military towards domestic counterinsurgency, and to broker a deeper rapprochement with India – a development US analysts believe is key to resolving the conflict in Afghanistan.

 

[Imran Khan]

Wow excellent ... So why you let the americans launch operations inside pakistan ?

are you see news or just chill pak gov who never give order for scramble not PAF who don't want engage.letest PAF cheaf ask gov to give order for hit usa drones

we are the one who become for help you in yom kappor war read some history PAF poilets hit 3 israily jets in 1973

 

[dr.umer]

Wow excellent ... So why you let the americans launch operations inside pakistan ?

Because Pakistan Air Force has not yet received orders from Government of Pakistan.

 

[dr.umer]

No troop mobilisation by India​

30 Nov 2008

NEW DELHI: The Indian Armed Forces are on a general state of alert after the Mumbai attacks, but officials denied that there was any plan for mobilisation of forces as reported in a section of Pakistani media.

The officials said an alert is issued after every major terror strike in the country when various establishments are asked to beef up security. But there are no orders for any troop mobilisation.

A section of Pakistan media reported that tension was mounting between New Delhi and Islamabad in the wake of the terrorist strike in Mumbai. The reports quote from an off-the-record briefing to local media by an unnamed Pakistani military official saying Indian security forces were on an alert.

The Indian officials, on the other hand, maintained that the general state of alert was also in response to a similar move initiated by Pakistan on its eastern border after the Mumbai attacks.

 

[Nihat]

and so the paranoia of war mongers begins to decline.

 

[Rafael]

Wah , kya baat hai - excellent . I tell you , Pakistan toh USAF ki band bajane wala hai . Zarah firang apne drones bhej ke toh dekein

a lil too optimistic i would say!!!!

 

[dr.umer]

No troop mobilisation along Indo-Pak border: Pak Army​

Islamabad, Nov 30 (PTI) Dismissing reports of any "unusual" movement or build-up of troops along the Indo-Pak border in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks, the Pakistan army today said "there is nothing to worry about".

Maj Gen Athar Abbas, the Director General of Inter-Services Public Relations, said the ceasefire along the borders in Jammu and Kashmir too was holding.

"There is nothing to worry about. I would not like to make any speculative comments about the situation," Abbas told PTI.

There were "no official authenticated" reports of any "unusual movement, change or build-up (of troops) on this side or that side of the border", he said.

Abbas also noted that the Indian government or security establishment had not made any comment regarding any change in the ceasefire along the Line of Control or international border in Jammu and Kashmir and the truce was holding.

"Therefore, it (the ceasefire) is as it was," he said.

The comments by Pakistani military's chief spokesman came in the wake of media reports on a background briefing yesterday by unnamed senior security officials warning of mounting tensions with India as a result of the terror strikes.

They said up to 100,000 Pakistani troops could be diverted from fighting militants on the Afghan frontier to be deployed on the Indian border.

The officials had also said that the next two days would be crucial in determining how the situation would unfold.

Indian Army also denied reports that New Delhi was mobilising troops on the border with Pakistan, scotching speculation in this regard. PTI

 

[Nihat]

bas brother , lets put a collective end to this .

Kya milega past ko bar bar remind karvane se.

 

[dr.umer]

If you won 1971 war then why did 93000 POWs Surrender to IA.

some more records:

Largest no of POWs in world history.

Released STAMPS for POWs.

ImageakistanPoW.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Better stick to the topic please. If you want to comment on 1971 do it in appropriate thread.

 

[Nihat]

This is a Pak , defense forum - what do you expect Sir.

 

[dr.umer]

This is a Pak , defense forum - what do you expect Sir.

Dear Nihat,

I think management of this forum is doing their job in the best possible way. Neutrality of management is not questionable and the one who is not happy can leave any time.

 

[Awesome]

This is a Pak , defense forum - what do you expect Sir.

Only the best.

 

[Nihat]

Only the best.

I would hope so.