Mumbai 7/11 - 7 bombs, 10 minutes, 200 dead

I watched what just happened in Mumbai on TV and I must say, it feels appalling to see innocent people being besieged for no obvious reason. It’s bad that it was in a cosmopolitan that is the financial capital of the India but more distressing is the gruesome fact that these eight blasts have ripped into the soul of the middle class life and left many a families ruined.

The bombs exploded in the evening rush hour, mostly in first-class carriages carrying white-collar workers to their homes in the north of the city. Survivors and passers-by showed resilience as prior Mumbaikars have shown and pulled out the dead and carried the injured to hospitals. Differences of religion and caste were forgotten.

The carnage was familiar from other attacks — twisted wreckage of train carriages, body parts scattered along the track, dazed, bloodstained survivors trying to make calls on an overloaded mobile phone network. Once again the terrorists had chosen a soft target, determined to cause maximum destruction. Each day Bombay’s commuter trains carry 6.5 million people to work.

The rush-hour attacks on one of the world’s most populous and chaotic cities sent hundreds of thousands of commuters fleeing from suburban stations, most on to the streets and even motorways in panic, as mobile phone lines jammed after the blasts that targeted stations along the city’s busy western rail line. Television footage that I saw showed dazed commuters with blood dripping from gaping wounds being carried by fellow travelers to waiting ambulances near Mahim station. Others tried frantically to call their relatives on mobile telephones. One young man sat in a Metro station with blood streaming down his face. The blasts happened when the trains were most crowded and were clearly targeted to kill as many people as possible; these attacks were designed to kill thousands of people. They knew the carriages would be packed with 200 people each. It is astonishing to all that so many have survived

I say “When they find those responsible, they shouldn't have court cases and trials or anything, they should just shoot them on these tracks.”

Sphere: Related Content