Mumbai Attacks: 300 Feared Dead

The only terrorist captured alive after the Mumbai massacre has given police the first full account of the extraordinary events that led to it – revealing he was ordered to ‘kill until the last breath’.
Azam Amir Kasab, from Pakistan, said the attacks were meticulously planned six months ago and were intended to kill 5,000 people.

He revealed that the ten terrorists, who were highly trained in marine assault and crept into the city by boat, had planned to blow up the Taj Mahal Palace hotel after first executing British and American tourists and then taking hostages. As it is, their deadly attacks have left close to 200 confirmed dead, with the toll expected to rise to nearly 300 once the hotel has been fully searched by security forces.

And as Indian commandos ended the bloody 59-hour siege at the Taj yesterday by killing the last three Islamic gunmen, baby-faced Kasab was dispassionately detailing the background to the mayhem. He described how its mastermind briefed the group to ‘target whites, preferably Americans and British’.Some of the militants, including Kasab, posed as students during a visit to Mumbai a month ago, filming the ‘strike locations’ and familiarising themselves with the city’s roads.

Mumbai attacks: 300 feared dead as full horror of the terrorist attacks emerges
The death toll in the Mumbai terror attack is expected to soar to nearly 300, Indian officials said, as details emerged of the highly-organised terror plot.
Telegraph.co.uk
Piles of bodies were found yesterday after commandos stormed the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the last of three buildings that terrorists had occupied in the city. Three terrorists were killed in the battle.
The end to four days of carnage came as tensions grew between India and Pakistan over the atrocity.
It is believed that just 10 highly-trained terrorists took part in the attack. Nine were killed and one suspect is under arrest.
British and Indian authorities were yesterday playing down reports that some of the attackers were British, although this had not been comprehensively ruled out.
The Sunday Telegraph was given the details of a secret interrogation report based on an interview with the surviving terrorist. The 19-year-old suspect, who lived near the Pakistani city of Multan, is said to have joined Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Islamist fundamentalist group, a year ago.
He is alleged to have confessed that he received weapons instruction at a training camp in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The plot is said to have been planned from there. A group then made a reconnaissance of Bombay earlier this year.
India believes a Pakistani merchant ship was used to transport some, or all, of the terrorists before they seized control of a fishing trawler to reach Mumbai (Bombay). The final leg of their journey was completed in inflatable boats.
Pakistan called an emergency cabinet meeting after announcing that it would not send the country’s secret service chief to New Delhi. The Indian government had demanded the head of the ISI travel in person to respond to questions.
Meanwhile, the former head of Britain’s SAS has revealed that Britain is not adequately prepared for a Mumbai-style terror attack. He said hundreds of civilians would have been massacred if such an assault was carried out in this country.
A final death toll will not emerge until the end of operations to ensure the hotel rooms and corridors are cleared of booby traps. However, S Jadhav, from Mumbai’s disaster management unit, predicted the figure would approach 300.
More than 600 people escaped from the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the Oberoi-Trident hotel and Nariman House, which were held by the attackers.
Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Islamist fundamentalist group, is being widely blamed for the atrocity. Indian investigators claim to have obtained significant leads to synchronised strikes by gunmen from the testimony of the surviving terrorist.
It is believed he and the other terrorists were instructed at the terror camp in Pakistan on how to maximise the number of casualties during an attack, using machine guns, hand grenades and other weapons.
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.
All the dead terrorists, as well as the captured alleged gunman, appear to have been born in Pakistan. The group also sent eight operatives on a reconnaissance mission to Mumbai earlier this year, Indian officials have claimed.

Wild Thing’s comment……….
They had primary “diversionary” attack targets, they killed pedestrians and then ran to their primary targets in buildings, to kill more people and take hostages. From what I have seen in photos and in articles they did like a buddy system, one firing and giving time for the other terrorist to reload. Then a main group of them locked down the hotel.
The article in this post says they planed this for 6 months.