It turns out that my observation about the Indian police and army were unfortunately correct. They were not combat ready and were armed with Indian produced Lee-Enfield rifles designed for medium to long-range volley fire by infantry but hopeless in a confined space against terrorists armed with automatic weapons. From MyWay:
In the first wave of the attacks, two young gunmen armed with assault rifles blithely ignored more than 60 police officers patrolling the city’s main train station and sprayed bullets into the crowd.
Bapu Thombre, assistant commissioner with the Mumbai railway police, said the police were armed mainly with batons or World War I-era rifles and spread out across the station.
“They are not trained to respond to major attacks,” he said.
The gunmen continued their rampage outside the station. They eventually ambushed a police van, killed five officers inside – including the city’s counterterrorism chief – and hijacked the vehicle as two wounded officers lay bleeding in the back seat.
“The way Mumbai police handled the situation, they were not combat ready,” said Jimmy Katrak, a security consultant. “You don’t need the Indian army to neutralize eight to nine people.”
Constable Arun Jadhav, one of the wounded policemen, said the men laughed when they noticed the dead officers wore bulletproof vests.
According to some reports, there were only 10 terrorists – and the world wonders how such a small gang was able to confound an entire police force. The details are emerging slowly but should yield ugly lessons. Clearly, the terrorist were unafraid of the police.
H/T on the article to Powerline.
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