2008 Mumbai Attacks: The 26/11 Siege of India's Financial Capital

The 2008 Mumbai attacks, often called 26/11 in India, were a series of coordinated shootings and bombings in Mumbai, India’s largest city and financial capital, from 26 to 29 November 2008. Ten gunmen from the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba attacked a railway station, two luxury hotels, a café, a hospital and a Jewish centre, killing 166 people. The roughly 60-hour siege was broadcast live around the world and sharply worsened relations between India and Pakistan.

Background

Lashkar-e-Taiba (“Army of the Righteous”) was founded in Pakistan around 1990 and had fought mainly in the disputed region of Kashmir. India blamed it for earlier attacks, including the 2001 assault on the Indian Parliament, which had brought India and Pakistan close to war. The group was banned in Pakistan in 2002, and the United States and the United Nations listed it as a terrorist organisation.

Mumbai had suffered serious attacks before, including the 1993 bombings and the 2006 train bombings. But in 2008 India and Pakistan were engaged in a slow peace process, and the scale and method of the Mumbai attack, with small teams of gunmen arriving by sea and aiming at well-known landmarks, came as a profound shock.

The attack begins

The ten attackers left Karachi by sea, hijacked an Indian fishing trawler, the Kuber, and killed its crew. On the evening of 26 November they transferred to an inflatable dinghy and landed in south Mumbai near the Colaba fishermen’s settlement.

They split into small teams. At about 21:45, two gunmen opened fire at the Leopold Cafe, a restaurant popular with tourists. At the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the city’s busiest railway station, Ajmal Kasab and Ismail Khan fired into crowds of passengers, killing dozens of people before leaving the station.

Kasab and Khan then attacked the area around Cama Hospital, where they ambushed a police vehicle. Among those killed were Hemant Karkare, head of Mumbai’s Anti-Terrorism Squad, and senior police officers Ashok Kamte and Vijay Salaskar. Taxis carrying bombs planted by the attackers exploded in two other parts of the city.

The sieges

Other teams entered the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, a landmark opened in 1903 overlooking the Gateway of India, and the Oberoi Trident hotel at Nariman Point. They shot guests and staff, took hostages and started fires. Smoke and flames rising from the Taj’s central dome became the defining image of the attacks.

Two gunmen also seized Nariman House, a centre run by the Chabad Jewish movement. Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, his wife Rivka and several other people there were killed; their two-year-old son was rescued by his Indian nanny.

Mumbai police were poorly equipped for the assault, and commandos of India’s National Security Guard had to be flown in from near Delhi, arriving on the morning of 27 November. They cleared the Oberoi Trident on 28 November and Nariman House the same day. The final gunmen at the Taj were killed on the morning of 29 November, about 60 hours after the attacks began.

The operation was slowed by the size of the hotels, which contained hundreds of rooms and long corridors, by the fires, and by the need to protect hostages and guests hiding in their rooms. Live television pictures showed commandos being lowered by helicopter onto the roof of Nariman House and smoke pouring from the Taj, and millions of people across India followed the siege hour by hour.

Investigators later found that the attackers had been in phone contact with handlers in Pakistan throughout the siege, receiving instructions and following live television coverage of the security operation.

Victims

The attacks killed 166 people, not counting the attackers, and injured more than 300. The dead included Indian civilians, police officers, hotel staff and railway passengers, as well as more than 20 foreign nationals from countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Germany, Canada and Australia.

Many hotel employees were praised for helping guests escape or hide, and several Taj staff members died while doing so. Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan and Havaldar Gajender Singh of the National Security Guard were among the security personnel killed.

Kasab’s capture and the investigation

On the night of 26 November, police stopped Ajmal Kasab and Ismail Khan at a roadblock at Girgaum Chowpatty. Khan was killed, and Kasab was captured alive; an assistant sub-inspector, Tukaram Omble, was killed while seizing him. Kasab, from a village in Pakistan’s Punjab province, became the only surviving attacker and confessed to his role.

Pakistan at first denied that the attacker was a Pakistani citizen, but in January 2009 it acknowledged that Kasab was from Pakistan. Pakistan later arrested and charged several suspects, including the Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, although the trials moved slowly. In the United States, the Pakistani-American David Headley pleaded guilty in 2010 to helping to scout targets in Mumbai for Lashkar-e-Taiba.

A special court in Mumbai convicted Kasab in May 2010 and sentenced him to death. He was executed in Pune on 21 November 2012.

Consequences

The attacks caused a major political shock in India. The Union Home Minister and Maharashtra’s chief minister resigned in the days that followed. India created the National Investigation Agency in December 2008 to handle terrorism cases, strengthened anti-terrorism law, set up regional hubs for National Security Guard commandos and invested in coastal security.

India suspended its peace dialogue with Pakistan, and tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours rose, though the crisis did not lead to war. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government pursued diplomatic pressure, and the United Nations and the United States imposed further sanctions on Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders and fronts.

Inquiries into the response, including a high-level committee appointed by the Maharashtra government, criticised gaps in intelligence sharing, police training and equipment. Warnings about a possible attack from the sea had been received before November 2008 but had not led to effective action. Many of the reforms that followed aimed at these weaknesses, including faster commando deployment, modern weapons and protective gear for city police, and closer coordination between the navy, coast guard and state police along India’s long coastline.

The Taj hotel partly reopened in December 2008 and was fully restored by 2010. Memorials were built at the hotel and at the railway station, and 26 November is marked each year in Mumbai.

Timeline

• 2008, 22–23 November: The ten attackers leave Karachi by sea and hijack the trawler Kuber.
• 2008, 26 November, evening: The gunmen land in south Mumbai; attacks begin at the Leopold Cafe and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.
• 2008, 26 November, night: Senior police officers are killed near Cama Hospital; Ajmal Kasab is captured.
• 2008, 27 November: National Security Guard commandos arrive in Mumbai.
• 2008, 28 November: The Oberoi Trident and Nariman House are cleared.
• 2008, 29 November, morning: The last gunmen at the Taj Mahal Palace are killed.
• 2010, 6 May: Kasab is sentenced to death by a special court in Mumbai.
• 2012, 21 November: Kasab is executed in Pune.

Why it matters

The Mumbai attacks showed how a small, well-trained group could paralyse a city of millions by striking several symbolic targets at once, a method later studied by security services worldwide. Coming seven years after the September 11 attacks, they reshaped India’s security system and deepened the long rivalry between India and Pakistan that dates back to Partition in 1947.