CNN reports that Indian police have issued a terror alert in Mumbai, warning that four members of the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba terror organization have entered the city, and may be planning to carry out attacks on Christmas or New Year’s Day. The group previously carried out a shocking massacre in 2008, in which ten gunmen stormed hotels, a train station, and a Jewish cultural center, ultimately killing 164 people.
Indians recently commemorated the second anniversary of the massacre with prayers and a march for peace, while Prime Minister Manmohan Singh denounced the Mumbai slaughter as a “crime against humanity” and vowed to “bring the perpetrators to justice.” The possibility of another attack is being taken very seriously by the authorities.
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, whose name means “Army of the Pure,” is based in Pakistan, and is often suspected of receiving assistance from compromised elements of the Pakistani state security service, the ISI. (The harshest critics say it’s easier to name the elements of the ISI that aren’t “compromised.”) The group has an ideology based in the feral Wahhabi Muslim ideology, and its published agenda calls for the imposition of Islamic rule over all of India. The Mumbai massacre is widely blamed for stalling peace negotiations between India and Pakistan, both of which are nuclear powers.
Meanwhile, the bombings that occurred this morning at the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome have been tied to packages mailed from Greece, according to the Italian interior minister. An anarchist group called the Italian Anarchist Federation, which is said to be linked to an “international anarchist movement,” has claimed responsibility. A similar group based in Greece, Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire, targeted French president Nicholas Sarkozy, the headquarters of the World Court, and the Athens embassies of Belgium and Mexico, with parcel bombs last month, although only one person was injured.
