Interrogating the Survivor

Apparently only one of the Islamic terrorists who attacked Mumbai survived. He is now being interrogated by Indian authorities, and information about the attack is starting to emerge.

The survivor is a Pakistani named Mohammad Ajmal Mohammad Amin Kasab. Kasab claims to be the person who murdered Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare and other policemen. Evidently there were only ten terrorists involved in the attack, which seems like a low number for the mayhem they caused and the time it took to kill them. Kasab says that five teams with two members each attacked a series of targets, to which they took taxis. I’m not really a gun guy, but I can’t help thinking that a few armed men here and there–citizens, if not security guards–would have been helpful.

Kasab says that the plan was to take hostages and try to escape from Mumbai; so far, at least, there is no indication as to why the terrorists didn’t attempt this. Finally, this item is interesting:

According to a Mumbai crime branch official, the ten terrorists had not come to Mumbai before this to conduct any ‘recce’ and they had learnt about the locations with the help of Google Earth.

Great.

UPDATE: A video report accessible at the Times of India site linked to above contradicts this information in several respects, and adds that Kasab told authorities he was trained for three months by the Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan. As always, this sort of preliminary information should be taken with a grain of salt.

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