The gunman said into the phone: “We have three foreigners, including women.”
The response was plain and brutal: “Kill them,” the man said. Gunshots then rang out inside the Mumbai hotel, followed by a round of cheering.
The ruthless exchange comes from a transcript of phone calls intercepted during the Mumbai attacks that was part of a dossier of evidence India handed Pakistan this week.
New Delhi says the evidence, which also included photographs of recovered weapons, data gleaned from satellite phones, and details from the interrogation of the lone surviving gunman, proves that the Mumbai siege was launched from across the border.
Pakistani authorities have dismissed the evidence as “a propaganda offensive” designed “to whip up tensions” in the region.
The transcripts, which were obtained by the newspaper The Hindu, show that the 10 gunmen who carried out the attacks were in close contact with their handlers throughout the siege. India says the handlers directing the attacks that left 164 dead were senior leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group.
“There are three ministers and one secretary of the cabinet in your hotel. We don’t know in which room,” the handler told a gunman inside the Taj Mahal hotel at 3:10am on the first night of the attack.
“Oh! That is good news. It is the icing on the cake!” he said.
The handler told him to find the government officials “and then get whatever you want from India.”
The handlers in Pakistan told another team of gunmen who had seized a Jewish center to shoot the hostages if necessary.
“If you are still threatened, then don’t saddle yourself with the burden of the hostages. Immediately kill them,” he said.
He then added: “If the hostages are killed, it will spoil relations between India and Israel.”
“So be it, God willing,” the gunman replied.
Six Jewish foreigners, including a rabbi and his wife, were killed inside the Jewish center.
Later in the night, nearly 24 hours after the attacks began, the handlers urged the gunmen to “be strong in the name of Allah.”
“Brother, you have to fight. This is a matter of prestige of Islam. You may feel tired or sleepy, but the commandos of Islam have left everything behind, their mothers, their fathers,” the transcript said.
The gunmen were told several times not to kill any Muslim hostages.
They were ordered: “Keep your phone switched on so that we can hear the gunfire.”
As the sun sets on another scorching Yangon day, the hot and bothered descend on the Myanmar city’s parks, the coolest place to spend an evening during yet another power blackout. A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted Southeast Asia this week, sending the mercury to 45°C and prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes. Even before the chaos and conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup, Myanmar’s creaky and outdated electricity grid struggled to keep fans whirling and air conditioners humming during the hot season. Now, infrastructure attacks and dwindling offshore gas reserves mean those who cannot afford expensive diesel
Does Argentine President Javier Milei communicate with a ghost dog whose death he refuses to accept? Forced to respond to questions about his mental health, the president’s office has lashed out at “disrespectful” speculation. Twice this week, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was asked about Milei’s English Mastiff, Conan, said to have died seven years ago. Milei, 53, had Conan cloned, and today is believed to own four copies he refers to as “four-legged children.” Or is it five? In an interview with CNN this month, Milei referred to his five dogs, whose faces and names he had engraved on the presidential baton. Conan,
French singer Kendji Girac, who was seriously injured by a gunshot this week, wanted to “fake” his suicide to scare his partner who was threatening to leave him, prosecutors said on Thursday. The 27-year-old former winner of France’s version of The Voice was found wounded after police were called to a traveler camp in Biscarrosse on France’s southwestern coast. Girac told first responders he had accidentally shot himself while tinkering with a Colt .45 automatic pistol he had bought at a junk shop, a source said. On Thursday, regional prosecutor Olivier Janson said, citing the singer, that he wanted to “fake” his suicide
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”