Tel Aviv - Israel said Friday it had no doubt that the
militants who attacked Mumbai had deliberately sought out both
Jewish and Israeli as well as American and British targets.
By attacking the Chabad House Jewish center in Mumbai as well as
the tourist hotels, the attackers had aimed to take both British and
American as well as Jewish and Israeli hostages, Foreign Ministry
Spokesman Yigal Palmor said.
The Jewish target was 'absolutely not an accident because the
Chabad House is not located on a central avenue,' he told Deutsche
Presse-Agentur dpa.
'They couldn't have just found it by chance. You only get there
if you want to get there. It something of an alley. It's a marginal
passage. You don't get there by chance. They knew where they were
going.'
Palmor said the Foreign Ministry's working assumption was that
'there could be 10 or even 20 people' still trapped inside the
Jewish center of the ultra-Orthodox Chabad movement.
Most of them were Israelis, including the rabbi and his wife who
run the center, two kosher food supervisors and several Israeli
visitors. Several non-Israeli, Jewish travelers were also believed
to be inside. He stressed however there was no confirmed number.
The fate of the Israelis, including that of Rabbi Gavriel
Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, in their late twenties and the
Israeli-born directors of the center, remained unknown.
The couple's nanny who had managed to escape the building with
their two-year-old son Thursday said she had found him standing next
to them and crying out for her as they were slumped over and lying
motionless on the floor. The pair had been supposed to celebrate his
second birthday Friday, a Chabad spokesman said.
A former official of Israel's Shin Bet internal security
organization, meanwhile, criticized the Indian commandos' handling
of the hostage situation.
'In hostage situations, the first thing the forces are supposed
to do is assemble at the scene and begin collecting intelligence,'
he told the Jerusalem Post.
'In this case, it appears that the forces showed up at the scene
and immediately began exchanging fire with the terrorists instead of
first taking control of the area.'
Palmor however denied Israel was dissatisfied with the way the
Indians were handling the crisis at the center.
'I'm sure some smart guy somewhere in Israel found this a good
opportunity to say that we can do this better, but I can assure that
this is not the official position,' he said. 'This is definitely not
the feeling in the Foreign Ministry.'
He said Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni had offered
assistance, which he said the Indians had 'politely' turned down.
'The open offer is on the table,' he said.
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