In response to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India on November 27,
that left 171 people dead and another 300 injured, Italian leaders have called
for a united front to counteract terrorism.
‘The fight against terrorism is essential for the peaceful development
of international relations, and is of profound interest to all civilized
countries’, said Italian president Giorgio Napolitano. Italy’s minister of
foreign affairs, Franco Frattini, asserted, ‘The Mumbai attacks confirm that
terrorism remains the top priority for world action.’
The coordinated terrorist attacks were launched on the Oberoi Trident
Hotel, the Taj Mahal Hotel, the city’s Jewish centre, a restaurant popular with
foreign tourists among other tourist and business venues. One Italian, Antonio
De Lorenzo, a businessman from Livorno, was among the dead in the Oberoi
Trident Hotel. The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs believes a handgrenade
explosion killed De Lorenzo, who was in Mumbai on business. Forty Italian
travelers took refuge in the Italian consulate, and another seven Italian
nationals, including a 6-month-old child, were held hostage in the Oberoi
Trident Hotel for 36 hours before being freed.
Upon returning to Rome on November 29, one of the released hostages told
journalists at Fiumicino, ‘It was like a hell. Bombs and dead bodies, that’s
what I can tell you, that’s all. I don’t remember anything else’.
Indian authorities suspect that those responsible for the attacks were
members of Pakistani-based terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba.
