A candlelight vigil in Allahabad, India, on Friday for those killed in recent terror attacks in Mumbai. (Rajesh Kumar Singh/The Associated Press)

India acknowledges errors in response to attacks

By Somini Sengupta and Jane Perlez

Published: December 5, 2008

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MUMBAI, India: India conceded Friday that the devastating terrorist attacks on Mumbai last week revealed "lapses" in its security arrangements, while the country's prime minister articulated the scale of anger and grievance stirred by the attacks in the Indian public.

"The people of India feel a sense of hurt and anger as never before," said the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, at a news conference in New Delhi.

That anger has been directed in part at India's neighbor, Pakistan, where Indian and American officials believe the attackers received training, and Manmohan said on Friday that other countries around the world should now confront Pakistan over the alleged presence of terrorists on its soil.

"We expect the world community to come to the same conclusion, that the territory of a neighboring country has been used for this crime," he said, referring to Pakistan.

But the anger is also focused domestically too, as Indians rage at their government for not having done more to protect them.

In the most public outrage so far, tens of thousands in Mumbai marched near the attacked sites on Wednesday, while similar rallies were held in New Delhi and in the southern technology hubs of Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Speaking in Mumbai on Friday, India's new home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, admitted that there had been "lapses" in the way India handled the crisis and said his government was trying to "improve the effectiveness of the security systems."

"There have been lapses," he told reporters. "I would be less than truthful if I said there had been no lapses."

Questions raised include why Indian intelligence had no forewarning of the plot, why security was so loose at the sites attacked in Mumbai, and why Indian security forces were so poorly armed — and in some cases so slow to respond.

Meanwhile, evidence linking the attackers to Pakistan builds. Fresh evidence unearthed by investigators in India has indicated that the Mumbai attacks were stage-managed from at least two Pakistani cities by top leaders of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Indian and American intelligence officials have already identified a Lashkar operative, who goes by the name Yusuf Muzammil, as a mastermind of the attacks. On Thursday, Indian investigators named one of the most well-known senior figures in Lashkar, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.

The names of both men came from the interrogations of the one surviving attacker, Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, 21, according to police officials in Mumbai.

While Muzammil appears to have served as a control officer in Lahore, Pakistan, Lakhvi, his boss and the operational commander of Lashkar, worked from Karachi, a southern Pakistani port city, said investigators in Mumbai.

It now appears that both men were in contact with their charges as they sailed to Mumbai from Karachi, and then continued guiding the attacks even as they unfolded, directing the assaults and possibly providing information about the police and military response in India.

Some of the calls appeared to be conversations about who would live and who would die among the gunmen's hostages, according to an official who interviewed survivors and a report by security consultants with contacts among the investigators.

While Indian officials have pointed a finger directly at Pakistani elements, terrorism experts and some Western officials warned that the emerging sketch of the plotters was still preliminary and could broaden even to include militants within India. India, too, has a long history of antagonism with Pakistan.

In Mumbai, meanwhile, Chidambaram issued a lower tally on Friday for casualties in the attacks, saying 163 people — including 18 members of the security forces — died along with nine suspected terrorists. The number of injured was 293, he said. Previous accounts put the death count among the attackers' victims at more than 170.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met in Islamabad with Pakistani leaders, a day after meeting with Indian leaders, to urge that the two countries work together to find the attackers' commanders and bring them to justice.

"What I heard was a commitment that this is the course that will be taken," Rice told reporters at Chaklala Air Base in Pakistan after meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.

But while Pakistan's leaders offered polite assurances, they made no public announcement of concrete measures to be taken against Lashkar. They have also continued to express skepticism of Pakistani involvement and have resisted handing over 20 suspects demanded by India.

Lashkar-e-Taiba, whose name means "army of the pure," was founded with the help of Pakistani intelligence officers more than 20 years ago as a proxy force to challenge Indian control of Muslim-dominated Kashmir.