indica Washington Bureau
Expressing solidarity with the victims of the dastardly terror attack that shook Mumbai on November 26, 2008, United States President Donald Trump said his country “stands with the people of India in their quest for justice”.
“On the ten-year anniversary of the Mumbai terror attack, the US stands with the people of India in their quest for justice,” Trump tweeted.
A total of 166 people, including Americans, were killed after 10 heavily-armed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists unleashed a wave of brutality in India’s financial capital.
“The attack killed 166 innocents, including six Americans. We will never let terrorists win, or even come close to winning!” the president said in a stern message.
Kia Scherr, a US national whose husband and a 13-year-old daughter were killed in the attack, thanked the president for his tweet.
“May this day serve to remind us that love overpowers hate. This is the strength no bullet can kill. This is our true power. Thank you,” she said.
“I join the friends and families in remembering the 166 victims, including the six American citizens killed during the attack, and I stand in solidarity with the people of India who have demonstrated their resilience in the face of such violence,” Congressman Eliot L Engel, Ranking Member of the powerful House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said.
Trump’s comments comes shortly after the announcement of USD 5 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of any individual who was involved in planning or facilitating the 26/11 assault.
Earlier, acting tough on Pakistan, Trump stopped hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the Islamic nation for not doing enough to curb terrorism and criticized Islamabad for keeping slain Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden safe and secure in Abbottabad.
“We give Pakistan USD 1.3 billion a year… (bin Laden) lived in Pakistan, we’re supporting Pakistan, we’re giving them USD 1.3 billion a year — which we don’t give them anymore, by the way, I ended it because they don’t do anything for us, they don’t do a damn thing for us,” Trump had said.
Also, US Secretary of state Mike Pompeo in a storngly-worded statement said that the “barbarity of 26/11 shocked the entire world”. On the 10th anniversary of the attack, Pompeo called upon Pakistan to uphold UN Security Council obligations to implement sanctions against the terrorists responsible for the atrocity.
Pompeo, along with top US counter-terror official Nathan Sales, asked Pakistan to bring Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operatives and other terrorists to justice.
“Our citizens died together. So we must all work together to end the scourge of terrorism. We must prevent the terrorists who committed this act of barbarism, LeT from ever threatening our people again,” Sales said.
He warned LeT and its leaders that the US will go after them where ever they are.
LeT founder Hafiz Saeed, the perpetrator of the attack, continues to roam freely in Pakistan and has only grown stronger over the years. In July this year, a party linked to Saeed’s LeT contested Pakistan’s national elections, failing
to win any seats but winning more than 435,000 national and regional votes.
At an event hosted to mark the tenth anniversary of 26/11 at the Indian embassy in US, Ambassador Navtej Sarna called on the international community to urge Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of this heinous attack to justice.
