All Mumbai Attackers From Pakistan: Indian Deputy Home Minister

The Mumbai attackers were all from Pakistan, India’s deputy interior minister said on Monday, stopping short of blaming the government in Islamabad for last week’s carnage which left more than 170 dead. As the US announced Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would head to India in a show of “solidarity,” the comments from Deputy Home Minister Shakeel Ahmad were the strongest yet pointing a finger of blame across the border. “We are not saying that it is sponsored by the Pakistan government,” India’s Deputy Home Minister Shakeel Ahmad told the BBC, adding that Pakistani soil was nevertheless being used for “anti-India” activities. “The terrorists who have been killed in these encounters in Mumbai in the last few days were of Pakistani origin,” Ahmad said, as well as the lone gunman arrested after the stunning coordinated attacks in India’s financial capital. With a sense of normalcy only slowly returning to the sprawling city, the focus has turned to who might be responsible for the brazen grenade and gun assault on two luxury hotels, a hospital, religious centre and other sites. According to Indian media reports Monday citing unnamed sources, Indian government officials feel that Pakistan has not fully enforced its official ban on the group. But Pakistan has denied any involvement in the latest bloodshed, which threatens to derail a slow-moving peace process launched in 2004, and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has urged India not to “over-react.” “It is a fact, a sad fact, that India has now experienced this level of terror,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. India’s intelligence and security agencies have come under heavy criticism for the incident, and Home Minister Shivraj Patil resigned Sunday to take what he said was “moral responsibility” over the carnage. But local media reports said the resignation of the country’s influential national security adviser, M.K. Narayanan, had not been accepted. “We have had terrorist attacks before… but this attack was different,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Sunday. “They came with the explicit aim of killing large numbers of innocent civilians, including foreign visitors.”About 30 foreigners were killed including five Americans, two French, two Australians and two Canadians.




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