INDIAN AUTHORITIES have deployed thousands of security personnel following warnings that Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based militant group, is planning an attack this weekend.
Police officers and paramilitaries were on high alert across the country, including in India’s financial capital, Bombay (Mumbai), Indian officials said. House-to-house searches were under way in some areas of the city, which was attacked by Lashkar-e-Taiba in November 2008. Airports and railway stations, the city of Ahmedabad in the western state of Gujarat and the beach resort state of Goa were also on high alert following the warning .
Most of the locations covered by the alert had been visited by David Headley, a Pakistani-American and member of Lashkar-e-Taiba who travelled widely in India before the Bombay attack, one official said. Headley was tasked by the extremist group with surveillance of targets in Bombay, but also visited Goa and Pune, where there was a blast in February.
According to a report by Indian investigators of their interrogation of Headley in June, the militant brought back film and notes on potential targets in India such as Jewish centres and resorts favoured by Israelis.
Headley claimed he combined missions for Lashkar-e-Taiba with missions for the Pakistani spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. His last trips to India before arrest in Chicago in October last year were for a Pakistani militant linked to al-Qaeda called Ilyas Kashmiri, he said.
India has taken all terror threats seriously since the three-day terrorist siege killed 166 people in Bombay two years ago. In that attack, 10 armed terrorists attacked two luxury hotels, a Jewish centre and a railway station. The strike damaged relations with Pakistan.
In March, Bombay police said they had prevented a major terrorist strike after they arrested two Indian men. In September, police issued a terror alert for the city during a popular Hindu festival after receiving information that Islamist militants were planning a terror strike. Earlier this month, a small bomb exploded in the northern city of Varanasi, holy to Hindus. The attack was blamed on Indian Muslim militants.
Police have been searching since Friday for four men who authorities believe have entered Bombay to carry out a terrorist attack. – (Guardian service)