WorldIndia will not monitor Mumbai trial in Pakistan: Krishna
India will not monitor Mumbai trial in Pakistan: Krishna
SINGAPORE: Asia’s luxury hotels have become a favoured target for violent Islamic militant groups and security must be stepped up, experts said Thursday after a deadly hostage-taking at two hotels in Mumbai.
A group calling itself the ‘Deccan Mujahedeen’ said it carried out the attacks late Wednesday at several locations including the Oberoi Trident hotel and the iconic Taj Mahal Palace.
‘We have seen that there is a global trend now to attack Western hotels,’ said Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore.
‘The threat to hotels has increased significantly.’
Although the Taj and Oberoi are part of Indian-based hotel firms, witnesses said the gunmen had specifically chosen US and British citizens to take hostage.
Other recent attacks in the region have also targeted hotels belonging to Western companies and which are known to host foreigners.
These include: The September truck bombing of Islamabad’s Marriott hotel that killed at least 60; a January assault which killed eight people at Kabul’s top hotel, the Serena; suicide attacks on the Radisson SAS hotel, the Grand Hyatt and Days Inn in Amman, Jordan in 2005; the 2003 blast that killed 12 at Jakarta’s JW Marriott; and a 2002 car bombing that killed 11 French engineers outside Karachi’s Sheraton hotel.
‘I think it’s very much an attack on the ‘West’,’ said Nick O’Brien, an associate professor in counter-terrorism at Charles Sturt University in Canberra.
Gunaratna said that with Western diplomatic compounds increasingly more secure against bombings or armed assaults, attackers have turned on hotels as ‘the second embassies’.
The Mumbai attacks are a reminder that any Western hotel in a place such as India which is prone to terrorism should improve its security or at least review it, said O’Brien.
Indonesia’s experience has shown that improving security works, analysts said.
Since the Marriott and other bombings in Jakarta, hotels, office buildings and other potential targets have installed metal detectors, guards with mirrors and other devices to search vehicles.
Some hotels have built special ramps and barriers that make it difficult to drive right up to the lobby.
‘It has been a deterrent in Indonesia,’ said Sidney Jones, Jakarta-based senior adviser to the International Crisis Group of political analysts.She said bombers who struck Indonesia’s Bali island in 2005 rejected hotels as targets because of the tighter security. They chose instead open-air beachfront restaurants and another target, killing 23 people and injuring many more.
But while security measures have helped in Indonesia, Jones said ‘it seems like a hugely daunting task’ to protect India’s hotels, partly because of their sheer numbers.
Gunaratna said countries like India and Pakistan that face a significant terrorism threat should ask the government to post armed guards at international hotels. There should generally be greater cooperation between hotel security and government forces, he said.
O’Brien said the best defence is distance — keeping the hotel well back from a secured perimeter.
But analysts said that unless a hotel is turned into a fortress it is difficult to completely guard against well-trained armed assailants and those who are prepared to die.
‘It could in theory be done,’ O’Brien said. ‘But complete security is very, very difficult.’Tags: Mumbai attack,hotel attacks,hotel bombing,Marriott bombing,Taj,Oberoi,Jakarta
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