POLITICS-INDIA: Attack at Parliament Leaves Eleven Dead

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Dec 13 2001 (IPS) - A heavily armed ‘fedayeen’ (suicide squad) attempted to storm India’s Parliament House on Thursday, triggering off a firefight in which five of the attackers and six policemen were killed.

Security forces immediately sealed off the colonnaded, red sandstone Parliament Building where, ironically enough, discussions were to have begun on a new anti-terrorist bill that is being bitterly opposed as draconian.

India’s Interior Minister Lal Krishna Advani, who was present in Parliament, said the attackers appeared to be ‘fedayeen’ of the kind that carried out the Sep.11 attacks in New York and Washington.

Advani said the attack was similar to the suicide attack carried out on the Jammu and Kashmir assembly building on Oct. 1, linked to violence in the disputed territory of Kashmir. At least 50 people lost their lives in that attack.

Soon after the firing stopped, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan said “half a dozen militants armed with machine guns and grenades and an equal number of security personnel” had died in the exchange of fire that lasted for more than an hour.

One of the attackers died after the bomb strapped to his body went off, severing his body into pieces strewn outside one of the main gates leading to the Parliament building.

Attempts to evacuate the complex of at least about 150 members of Parliament who were present within the complex was delayed by reports of a live bomb near one of the several entrances to the complex.

At least 25 people were injured in the gunbattle and most of them were evacuated to a nearby government hospital.

Commando squads were brought in to help defuse the bomb and conduct combing operations for a sixth militant who was believed to have escaped into the complex.

The attack began at 11.15 a.m. soon after Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) was ordered adjourned by the Speaker as opposition members disrupted business demanding the resignation of Defence Minister George Fernandes over a purchase scam.

Opposition leaders have also sworn to block the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance which the government wants passed as an act during the ongoing winter session.

Asked of he thought there had been a breach of security, India’s Interior Minister Advani said: ” ‘Fedayeen’ attacks stem from terrorism of an extreme kind.. It is a type which has even breached the (U.S.) Pentagon.”

According to eyewitness, the attackers, dressed in black fatigues, drove through the outer barricades and opened fire and lobbed grenades when they could not pass through the inner security ring.

The home minister warned that those responsible for the attack would be made to pay “very heavy price” and has instructed provincial governments to be on alert.

A member of the al-Qaeda international terrorist organisation arrested recently in the west coast port city of Mumbai had confessed that the Indian Parliament as well as other key installations were to be targetted by ‘fedayeen’ attacks.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was not present in the house, is expected to make a televised address to the nation in the evening.