Excellent NYT insta-analysis of what's happening in Mumbai suggests this is unlikely to be Al-Q (no suicide bombers) and more likely to be domestic group borne from India's unhappy Muslim minority:
“The public political face of India says, “Our Muslims have not been
radicalized.’ But the Indian intelligence apparatus knows that’s not
true. India’s Muslim communities are being sucked into the global
landscape of Islamist jihad,” she said. “Indians will have a strong
incentive to link this to Al Qaeda. “Al Qaeda’s in your toilet!’ But
this is a domestic issue. This is not India’s 9/11.”
Terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman is impressed and alarmed:
“It’s not often that things in terrorism alarm me. So much is a repeat of what we see almost every day, like suicide bombings. There’s no real innovation in terrorism, which is why 9/11 was so terrifying, because it was so innovative and heinously clever.
“But these
attacks show how a handful of men, basically using weapons off the
shelf, can paralyze a city and frustrate highly trained security
forces. These attacks were calculated to spread alarm and anxiety — to
put it quite frankly, to unhinge things — and that’s exactly what
they’ve done.”
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