U.S. and British citizens were the targets of the violent siege in Mumbai last week, although most of those killed in India’s financial capital were Indians, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday.
Six Americans died in the attacks, which killed at least 171 people and wounded scores of others.
The same group that carried out last week’s attack is believed to be behind the 2006 Mumbai train bombings that killed more than 200, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell said Tuesday during a speech at Harvard University.
McConnell did not identify the group by name. However, the Indian government has attributed the 2006 attack to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani terrorist group based in Kashmir, and the Students Islamic Movement of India.
McConnell is the first U.S. official to publicly identify Lashkar as the likely perpetrator. Earlier Tuesday, a senior State Department official told reporters only that the brutal, prolonged attack had some roots in Pakistan. Privately, U.S. and foreign counterterrorism officials fingered Lashkar last week.
Earlier, at a Pentagon news conference, Gates said that chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, had gone to the region to meet with officials. Mullen’s spokesman, Navy Capt. John Kirby, said the attacks reflect a growing sophistication among extremist groups and are going to encourage a regional approach to security concerns.
Indian authorities have claimed a Pakistan connection for days, but the United States has not wanted to “jump to conclusions,” as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday. The administration fears that any misstep amid the extraordinarily high emotions surrounding the three-day assault could spark new and possibly deadly tensions between longtime, nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan.
Also Tuesday, senior administration officials and a foreign government official said Washington had advised India that a waterborne attack on Mumbai appeared to be in the works, and that Westerners and Israelis may be targeted. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of intelligence information. The officials would not elaborate on either the timing or details of the U.S. warning. However, they said the warning information was too general to take immediate action.
Rice arrived in India today, carrying the U.S. demand that Pakistan cooperate fully in the investigation into the attack.
Neither Rice nor Gates would confirm the United States had passed specific information to India ahead of the attacks.
“Obviously we try to pass information to countries all around the world if we pick up information,” Rice said at a press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
