A place for the latest news, information and discussion regarding disasters, terrorism, emerging infectious diseases, disaster response, mitigation and preparedness!
Intro: These pics came from a citizen in Mumbai, Arun Shanbhag. So much has been discussed about the value of “citizen journalists.” Are they good? Are they bad? Do they add something of value to the science and art of journalism during a breaking news story? A discriminatory audience should be able to differentiate between first-person accounts and attempts to be the next Christianne Amanpour. Or can it? The debate will rage on, but does it really matter? These bloggers with diverse motives will continue to post their accounts, whether fact or fiction, and there will be no constraints. The only thing we can do is to educate the public to be more cautious about the information they take away from these bloggers.
Purported to be a grenade crater in the Leopold Cafe, one of the sites of blood and mayhem. “The crater is the size of a large orange ? about 4 inches across and about 3 inches deep.”
Purported to be bullet holes in the window of the Cafe.
Their posts express shock, numbness, a sense of disbelief at the horror unfolding even as they type.
Details of the Mumbai terror attacks unfolded online as bloggers wrote personal accounts and replied to pleas for help.
Bloggers have reacted to the multiple terror attacks on Mumbai by logging on to express their views, share information and offer help to people looking for missing friends, relatives and colleagues.
“I think it’s been an outpouring,” said Neha Viswanathan, a volunteer who monitors the blogosphere for online community Global Voices.
“I haven’t seen anything like this since I started watching blogs closely in the last three to four years.
“People are using it as venting space right now. There is one stream of blogs that is talking about their own personal experiences; there’s a lot of sadness and a lot of anger.”
Twenty-nine-year-old blogger Harish Iyer started his post — Terror in Bombay — soon after the attacks started.
He published his mobile phone number and email address. In the 20 or so hours since midnight in Mumbai, November 27, he’s received around sixty phone calls and 100 emails from people desperate to find loved ones.
A man phoned him from Singapore looking for his father who was staying in Mumbai.
“He was frantically trying and he called me up,” Iyer told CNN. “He was literally in tears. He couldn’t speak, his voice was choked.”
“He was telling me that he was dialing the numbers for his father, but he couldn’t dial the numbers properly. His hands were shaking and he was shivering.”
“I took the number and called up his father and his father was fine.”
Iyer started his blog after seeing posts on the Mumbaihelp blog.
A list of the dead and injured has been posted there — they say it’s an official list obtained from a journalist friend — along with phone numbers for emergency services, hotels and the local police.
It was started by blogger Peter Griffin, who goes by the username zigzagly, three years ago based on the model setup after the Asian Tsunami.
He too posted his mobile phone number on the blog site and has been taking calls. In the last 24 hours, more than 14,000 people have visited the site, including 9,000 unique users.
Griffin is not the only person responding to appeals for help on the site. He says bloggers reading the messages from distraught relatives are volunteering to make inquiries on their behalf.
“Anyone who comes in there is trying to help,” Griffin told CNN. “A lot of people who know we’ve done this kind of thing before. There’s a bunch of Indian bloggers in the U.S. who are getting a lot of information.”
One blogger “ruth-less” wrote: “My Parents are Americans trapped in the Taj tower on the 17th floor. They have been held there for over 13 hours. They are very afraid as am I.”
Harish Iyer volunteered to help find them. He called the Taj Helpline on behalf of “ruth-less” but is still waiting to hear back.
Neha Viswanathan told CNN that, in the aftermath of the attacks, those who aren’t waiting for news of loved ones are expressing anger at the government and some local media sources.
“Some of the blogs say it doesn’t look like the government is doing enough, overall, in terms of intelligence.
“Throughout last night we didn’t hear anything from the Prime Minister or anything else.”
Bloggers have also criticized coverage on local television stations.
“In a lot of the blogs I’ve read, people are really angry with one or two news channels in particular who they say have created panic,” Viswanathan said.
“Trust me, they’re on full panic mode right now. It’s not helpful when the city’s already reeling from terror shocks. Blogs have approached this with calm more so than the mainstream media has.”
Intro: If official estimates are accurate, how could just 10 gunmen have caused so much carnage and repelled Indian security forces for more than three days in three different buildings?
India’s English-language newspapers on 29 December criticised perceived lax security and the response of the country’s political leaders to the terror attacks in Mumbai.
TIMES OF INDIA (DELHI)
There is an urgent need for better coordination among various intelligence agencies and with the armed forces. This, however, is possible only if we have a major revamp of our security architecture. Many experts have outlined structural changes in the security establishment, like creating a federal agency, a centralised command structure and a nationwide information base with real-time access to security agencies. Besides, various wings of the security establishment have to be made autonomous and accountable.
INDIAN EXPRESS (DELHI)
Tactically, there was no single command structure for the operations being conducted since Wednesday night; this led to delays, crossed connections and redundancies, the cost of each of which could be measured in lives.
ASIAN AGE (DELHI)
It seems to be not India’s way to develop immune systems, to establish quick response procedures, and to maintain and keep these systems well greased so that terror practitioners may be rebuffed. Unlike America and Europe, we simply do not possess cohesive social and political systems, and a work culture that is tidy, efficient and prompt.
THE HINDU (CHENNAI)
Last month, the Lashkar-e-Toiba’s supreme religious and political head, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, made a signal speech to top functionaries: “The only language India understands is that of force, and that is the language it must be talked to in.” Had India’s strategic establishment listened, at least 127 people who made the mistake of being in Mumbai on November 26 would still have been alive. If more carnage is to be prevented, it is imperative to understand the culture of strategic deafness that facilitated the murderous attacks.
HINDUSTAN TIMES (DELHI)
Terrorist groups represent a degree of threat and commitment that runs counter to the attention span of most election cycle-driven politicians. Building a commonality of purpose within India’s leadership is beyond legislation. Until the security process is seen as immune to partisanship and treated as equally important by each successive government, India’s answer to terror’s implacability will continue to be the talk cycle.
THE TELEGRAPH (KOLKATA)
Security here, unlike in the US, Britain or Israel, is so lax that terrorists are free to come and go and do as they please. There is considerable substance in the second charge. But far from being the fault of any one political party, casualness about routine precautions, the insistence on exceptions and obsession with hierarchy are integral features of Indian life.
THE TRIBUNE (CHANDIGRAH)
The Pakistan government cannot get away by claiming that it had no knowledge of the terrorists operating from its territory. Pakistan is welcome to send its ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] chief to brief India but it is unlikely to satisfy the people of India so long as the Jihadi elements find a haven for themselves in Pakistan.
BBC Monitoring selects and translates news from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. It is based in Caversham, UK, and has several bureaux abroad.
A letter bomb has exploded inside the British Prime Minister’s London residence.
Margaret Thatcher was in 10 Downing Street when the device exploded but was not hurt in the blast.
One of her staff was slightly burnt in the attack.
Four more bombs were sent to senior politicians but were intercepted before they got through.
Letters from a group called the Animal Rights Militia were in the Downing Street package but other groups promoting animal welfare have said they have never heard of this organisation.
The bomb – which was addressed to the prime minister herself – arrived at Number 10 in a padded envelope and immediately aroused suspicions. The official responsible for handling such packages, office manager Peter Taylor, was handling it when it flared up, burning his hands and face.
Mr Taylor was taken to the nearby Westminster Hospital but was discharged after a few hours and is now back at work.
Designed to burn
Police said the device was gunpowder-based and was designed to burn rather than explode.
The remaining packages were sent to the leaders of the other major UK political parties and one government official. They were:
Michael Foot (Labour)
Roy Jenkins (SDP)
David Steel (Liberals)
Timothy Raison (Home Office)
Mrs Thatcher, who was in her study when the bomb went off, told the House of Commons at Prime Minister’s Questions that all MPs should be on their guard.
“Letter bombs anywhere are most distressing and I’m afraid we are all vulnerable,” she said.
An investigation is now underway to discover how the package got through the rigorous checks performed on all mail sent to 10 Downing Street.
…1994, Indian Ocean: An infamous liner was abandoned off the coast of east Africa due to fire on board. The Achille Lauro had been beset with ill-fortune all its life. It suffered serious damage from fires in 1965 and 1972. Three years later it collided with livestock carrier Yousset, which sank. In December 1981 three passengers were killed during an evacuation after a blaze broke out in the bar. The most notorious incident occurred in October 1985 when a Palestinian group hijacked the liner and murdered an American passenger. The ship finally sank two days after the 1994 fire as a salvage vessel towed it to Kenya.
BBC, 1994: Almost 1,000 people have been forced to abandon a luxury cruise ship in the Indian Ocean after it caught fire.
The Achille Lauro – which made headlines in 1985 when it was hijacked by Palestinian guerrillas – was sailing 50 miles off the Somali coast when the fire started in one of the cabins.
Two people died and eight were injured during the transfer of passengers from life rafts to a waiting tanker, according to Coastguard officials.
Starlauro, the ship’s Naples-based owners, said it had not established the cause of the blaze but confirmed it did not suspect foul play. Crew battled with the flames for almost seven hours as passengers – many of whom had paid £2,500 for the trip – gathered on deck.
The captain gave the order to abandon ship at 0500 local time (0200 GMT) after the fire began to burn out of control.
Panamanian registered tanker Hawaiian King was the first of a dozen ships which answered the Achille Lauro’s dawn SOS call and rescued most of the passengers.
As night fell, most of the survivors were recovering on the tanker, which had been supplied with extra food by the US Navy cruiser Gettysburg.
It is expected they will now be taken to the Kenyan port, Mombasa, or the Seychelles, which would have been the liner’s next port of call.
Dimitrios Skapinakis – captain of another tanker involved in the rescue operation – told reporters he thought the ailing 24,000 ton ship would sink within the next 12 hours.
“The Achille Lauro is listing by at least 40 degrees and you can still see smoke and flames – the passenger decks on the stern side are burning and flames are licking halfway up the vessel,” he said.
Search and rescue officials found nine bodies Saturday, bringing the death toll from flooding in southern Brazil to 109, the state news agency said.
Officials say 19 people remain missing.
Nearly 79,000 residents have been left homeless, said the state-run Agencia Brasil.
The state of Santa Catarina has been hardest-hit, and the government has declared 14 cities disaster areas, the news agency said.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva surveyed some of the flooded areas from the air this week and proclaimed the disaster one of the worst in the country’s history.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Lula said Thursday.
He said he was releasing $1.97 billion reais ($854 million U.S. dollars) in aid to the afflicted areas, most notably to Santa Catarina.
About 1.5 million people — one-fourth of the population — have been affected.
The tragedy also is having an economic effect, with bridges, roads, houses and buildings destroyed. The federation of industries said the closing of the port in the Santa Catarina city of Itajai is costing $33 million a day.
Mobs have burned homes, churches and mosques, and the death toll rose to more than 300 in a second day of sectarian violence in Africa’s most populous nation.
Sheikh Khalid Abubakar, the imam at the Jos, Nigeria’s main mosque, said more than 300 bodies were brought there Saturday, and 183 more could be seen near the building waiting to be interred.
Those killed in the Christian community would not likely be taken to the city mosque, raising the possibility that the total death toll could be much higher. The city morgue wasn’t immediately accessible Saturday.
Police spokesman Bala Kassim said there were “many dead,” but couldn’t cite a firm number.
Fighting began Friday between supporters of the region’s two main political parties following the first local election in the town of Jos in more than a decade. The violence expanded along ethnic and religious lines, with Hausa Muslims and members of Christian ethnic groups doing battle.
The violence is the worst in Nigeria since 2004, when as many as 700 people died in Plateau State during Christian-Muslim clashes.
Jos, the capital of Plateau State, has a long history of community violence that has made it difficult to organize voting. Rioting in September 2001 killed more than 1,000 people.
The city is situated in Nigeria’s “middle belt,” where members of hundreds of ethnic groups commingle in a band of fertile and hotly contested land separating the Muslim north from the predominantly Christian south.
Authorities imposed an around-the-clock curfew in the hardest-hit areas of Jos, where traditionally pastoralist Hausas live in tense, close quarters with Christians from other ethnic groups.
Angry mobs gathered Thursday in Jos after electoral workers failed to publicly post results in ballot collation centers, prompting many onlookers to assume the vote was the latest in a long line of fraudulent Nigerian elections.
Riots flared Friday morning and at least 15 people were killed. Local ethnic and religious leaders made radio appeals for calm on Saturday, and streets were mostly empty by early afternoon. Troops were given orders to shoot rioters on sight.
Violence also followed the May 2007 inauguration of President Umaru Yar’Adua, who came to power in a vote that international observers dismissed as not credible.
Few Nigerian elections have been deemed free and fair since independence from Britain in 1960, and military takeovers have periodically interrupted civilian rule.
More than 10,000 Nigerians have died in sectarian violence since civilian leaders took over from a former military junta in 1999. Political strife over local issues is common in Nigeria, where government offices control massive budgets stemming from the country’s oil industry.
Inside the blacked-out Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, hallways were littered with bloodied bodies.
A commando in disguise
Terrorists were still holding 200 people 33 hours after the assault began.
Knowing next to nothing about what they might encounter in the dark recesses of the hotel, Indian Army commandos decided to go back in — and were met by terrorists firing mercilessly, throwing grenades and continuously switching positions.
The sound of gunfire and explosions reverberated throughout the hotel’s atrium, making it impossible to pinpoint the origin of the shots.
Through it all, the commandos walked down pitch-black halls, trying to navigate the damaged hotel without knowing the layout.
A commando spokesman, his face and hair swathed in a black scarf and wearing dark glasses to hide his identity, revealed these details of the mission inside the Taj at a news conference Friday.
At 6:30 a.m. Friday, the battle at the Taj came to a head with a final firefight at the room holding the 200 hostages, he said.
When the gunfire stopped, commandos — known as the Black Cats — entered the room and freed all 200 hostages.
Their difficulties had been apparent from the beginning, he said.
“We did not know the layout of the hotel,” the commando told reporters. “There was one person on the hotel staff who was helping to guide us around.”
They entered the hotel for the first time essentially blind to what was ahead. They had no idea what kind of people they would encounter, what kind of weapons might be pointed at them, and whether they might be blown up by explosives.
“Then we heard gunshots on the second floor and we rushed toward the fired shots,” he said. “While taking cover we found that there were 30 to 50 bodies lying dead. At that point we also came under fire. The moment they saw us, they hurled grenades.”
When the shots stopped, the commandos moved toward the source of the gunfire.
“At that time, they vanished … they had gone elsewhere,” the commando said.
The attackers had a clear advantage, commandos said, because it was apparent from their movements they knew the hotel’s layout.
Some tourists rescued from the hotel said the building’s large dome and a massive atrium made the sounds of gunfire and explosions reverberate endlessly. It was impossible to pinpoint where the shooters were.
Because of the darkness, commandos could not tell how many terrorists were there — were there many, or only a few who continued to change positions?
At one point, commandos believed some of the terrorists were hiding on the eighth floor. As the commandos approached one of the rooms, attackers opened fire at them and said all the people in the room were dead.
“We fired at them and they fired at us, but because the room was absolutely dark and we had just gotten [inside] it made it difficult for us,” the commando said.
During the fight, two commandos were shot. They decided to flush out the terrorists by blocking entry and exit routes. But the attackers knew all the doors, he said.
When they made it inside the room, the terrorists had disappeared again.
Inside that room, commandos found AK-47 ammunition rounds, including seven magazines fully loaded, and 400 other rounds for other weapons. They found grenades, credit cards, U.S. notes, foreign money and bags of dried fruit, which they believed helped sustain the attackers during the siege.
During the three-day assault, the attackers fired indiscriminately. But the commandos were forced to use caution.
“Let me tell you one thing,” the commando said. “Within the first exchanges of fire, we could have got those terrorists — but there was so many hotel guests — there were bodies all over and blood all over. And we were trying to avoid the causalities of civilians. We had to be more careful in our fighting.”
In trying to rescue hostages and trapped civilians, commandos had to convince guests they were there to help, not terrorists trying to trick them, Indian Army Lt. Gen. Noble Thamburaj said.
“There are a number of rooms that are locked from inside,” he told reporters. “It is possible that some of the hotel guests have locked themselves in and for their own security and safety. Even though we have identified ourselves they are not opening the doors.”
The overall operation may have been made more difficult because of a late start, CNN sister station CNN-IBN reported.
CNN-IBN said that attacks at the Taj Mahal Hotel were well under way at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, but unnamed sources said the commandos were not given the go-ahead to take part in the rescue until midnight.
Those sources told CNN-IBN said that once the commandos got the go-ahead, it took nearly three hours for them to leave for Mumbai from their undisclosed location.
Once they arrived, the sources said, commandos had no precise maps of the hotel layout or its access points.
While local police and other officers were at the scene, the sources said, the commandos and army special force units are the only ones equipped and trained to rescue hostages.
Purported to be a grenade crater in the Leopold Cafe, one of the sites of blood and mayhem. “The crater is the size of a large orange ? about 4 inches across and about 3 inches deep.”
Purported to be bullet holes in the window of the Cafe.
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Memento mori
Officials say 19 people remain missing.
A commando in disguise 
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