Indian Commandos May Have Killed Some Chabad Hostages

Dan Friedman sent me this tragic Jerusalem Post story.

Nov. 30, 2008

Yaakov Lappin , THE JERUSALEM POST

Col. Yossi Turgeman, IDF attaché to India, said that the two Israelis announced missing by the Foreign Ministry were not among the dead, Army Radio reported on Sunday evening.

Israelis murdered in Mumbai Chabad House to be laid to rest in Israel on Monday

Therefore, Turgeman assessed that the missing Israelis were not killed in the Mumbai terror attacks.

Earlier on Sunday, the Foreign Ministry announced that the number of Israelis unaccounted for in Mumbai had dropped to two, after contact was made with two Israelis thought to be missing.

The Indian commando raid launched to save the lives of Jewish and Israeli hostages at Mumbai's Chabad House may have inadvertently ended the lives of one or more of the hostages, the head of a six-man ZAKA team in the terror-stricken Indian city told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

Speaking by phone from Mumbai, Haim Weingarten, the head of the Mumbai ZAKA team, said, "Based on what I saw, [although] I can't identify the type of bullets in the bodies [of the victims], I don't think the terrorists killed all the hostages, to put it gently."

All six Jewish and Israeli hostages found dead in the Chabad House were killed by either gunshot wounds or shrapnel from grenade blasts, or both, Weingarten said, adding that he didn't know who threw or fired the grenades that wounded the hostages.

Although he lacked forensic tools to determine time of death, Weingarten said his team's observations led him to believe that "some of the hostages were killed on Wednesday [when gunmen first entered the building], some on Thursday, and some on Friday morning [during the start of the commando raid]."

After a prolonged delay, an air force transport plane carrying Israel Police forensics experts and a second ZAKA team took off for Mumbai on Sunday evening. A ZAKA source told the Post the plane would probably return to Israel with the bodies of the hostages on Monday night.

ZAKA officials believe that in a final act of love, the director of the Chabad House, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, wrapped the body of his wife Rivka in a tallit before succumbing to his own wounds during the final hours of the siege.

Read the whole thing here.