There appears to be no motive for the attack, and no individual or group has claimed responsibility. The original prime suspects — Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Muslim separatist groups based in Kashmir — have denied any involvement. A spokesman purporting to be from Lashkar-e-Taiba told reporters that the attacks were “inhuman and barbaric acts.”
The bombings were an extremely intricate affair and could not have been pulled off by amateurs. CNN is reporting that the bombers hid their timers in pencils and used a military explosive known as RDX.
These bombings hit me quite personally, I suppose in a similar way that the London terror bus bombings (”7/7″) affected many Americans. No doubt there is a cultural and racial barrier which prevents some Westerners from empathizing with these victims — brown-people-killing-brown-people type of thing, or something like that.
But we all ought to pay attention, because the timing and execution of the attack hint at a sophisticated operation which almost assuredly required expertise in explosives and sabatoge. This was not the work of some “disenchanted jihadis”, which has become the standard answer for every terrorist attack. There is something much deeper at work here, and I hope that over the next few weeks more light will be shed on why someone decided to blow up commuter trains in Mumbai.
