Mumbai violence: Hotel attacks elsewhere in recent history
Hotels have always been prime targets for soldiers and terrorists, and you could fill an entire guidebook with the list of lodgings that have been bombed or shot at by combatants looking to spill blood and get attention.
Here are some of the more notable hotel episodes of the last seven decades:
— The King David Hotel in Jerusalem was bombed in June, 1946. More than 90 people were killed, most or all of them British officials using the building as a headquarter. The British controlled Jerusalem at the time, and the bombers were Zionists, commanded by Menachem Begin (who was to become Israel’s leader decades later).
— Repeated bombing of the Hotel Europa in Belfast. As the IRA and British troops battled over control of Northern Ireland for decades, the Hotel Europa became one of the most common target. Yet like the King David, it has endured and is still in business.
— Shooting of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, 1968. (The Ambassador on Wilshire Boulevard has since been demolished.)
— Bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England, in October 1984. Intended by IRA bombers to disrupt a Conservative Party conference, the blast killed five people — and nearly killed the British cabinet.
— In March 1981, U.S. President Ronald Reagan was shot by would-be assassin John Hinckley as he exited the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C.
— Canal Hotel, Baghdad, Iraq; August, 2003.
— The 2004 bombing of the Hilton Hotel at Taba, in Sinai, Egypt near the Israel border. The explosion, along with two others nearby, killed more than 30 people, most of them Egyptians and vacationing Israelis.
— The bombing of the Islamabad Marriott, Pakistan, in September, 2008, killing at least 54 and wounding upwards of 260, with most of the victims being Pakistanis.
— Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Times staff writer
[Photo: Farooq Naeem, AFP/Getty Images]
5 Comments on “Mumbai violence: Hotel attacks elsewhere in recent history”
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November 27th, 2008 at 9:32 am
1981 not 2001
November 29th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
I find it ironic that the LA Slimes would lead off with the Irgun bombing of the King David. A few salient points are in order. First the King David Hotel was primarily a military target as it was the HQ of the occupying British troops. Second, the British received a phone call from the Irgun urging them to evacuate in advance of the bombing - the British chose not to. All of the other terror incidents you mention were perpetrated against innocent civilians.
Also, I find it interesting that the paper chose to ignore the many high profile bombings perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists including the Passover massacre in Netanya.
November 29th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Why did you mention it was Zionists responsible for the King David Hotel, the IRA responsible for the Hotel Europa and Grand Hotel, and so on but omitted any responsible parties that were Muslim such as in Islamabad or Taba? Why did you forget the many hotel attacks in Israel that the Palestinians committed such as the recent Netanya Hotel attack in 2002 that killed 30? Will I ever see a response to this? Probably not but hopefully (if you publish it at all) someone will see it and recognize your bias towards appeasing radical Muslims.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
One more comment on the King David Hotel attack: only the southern wing was targeted which was wholly British, having been taken over from the owners in stages, beginning already in 1938. The Army Headquarters were located there as were the offices of the Mandate Government Secreteriat. See Thurston Clarke’s book, “In Blood and Fire”.
November 30th, 2008 at 6:28 am
What Mike Jefferson says and furthermore:
What about these other (next to the Netanya hotel attack) notable hotel bombings which should definitely have been mentioned in your list:
The 2005 Amman bombings were a series of coordinated bomb attacks on three hotels in Amman, Jordan, on November 9, 2005. Al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attacks, which killed 60 people and injured 115 others. The explosions—at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, the Radisson SAS Hotel, and the Days Inn—started at around 20:50 local time (18:50 UTC) at the Grand Hyatt. [1][2] The three hotels are often frequented by foreign diplomats. The bomb at the Radisson SAS exploded in the Philadelphia Ballroom, where a wedding hosting hundreds of guests was taking place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Amman_bombings
he 2004 Sinai bombings were three bomb attacks targeting tourist hotels in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, on October 7, 2004. The attacks killed 34 people and injured 171.
The explosions occurred on the night of October 7, against the Hilton Taba and campsites used by Israelis in Ras al-Shitan. In the Taba attack, a truck drove into the lobby of the Taba Hilton and exploded, killing 31 people and wounding some 159 others. Ten floors of the hotel collapsed following the blast.[1]
Some 50 kilometers (31 miles) south, at campsites at Ras al-Shitan, near Nuweiba, two more bombings happened. A car parked in front of a restaurant at the Moon Island resort exploded, killing two Israelis and a Bedouin. Twelve were wounded. Another blast happened moments later, targeting the Baddiyah camp, but did not harm anyone because the bomber had apparently been scared off from entering the campground by a guard. Of the dead, 15 were Egyptians, 12 were from Israel, two from Italy, one from Russia, and one was an Israeli-American.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Sinai_bombings
The 1993 Bombay bombings were a series of thirteen bomb explosions that took place in Bombay (now Mumbai), India on March 12, 1993.[3] The coordinated attacks were the most destructive bomb explosions in Indian history. The single-day attacks resulted in up to 250 civilian fatalities and 700 injuries.[4] The attacks are believed to have been coordinated by Dawood Ibrahim, don of the organized crime syndicate named D-Company, which had operated as a terrorist organization.[5] It is believed that the attacks were carried out in retaliation for widespread massacre of Muslims in Mumbai during December and January, and also the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Bombay_bombings
March 12, 1941: “Last night’s bomb explosion in the British-occupied Pera Palace Hotel, just after the arrival of the British diplomatic mission from Sofia, has caused extraordinary indignation in Istanbul.” Six people were killed.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0D1FFC355C167B93C1A81788D85F458485F9
And sure there are much more of which also many unsucceeded ones such as a failed assassination attempt at the kaiser in 1914 by the brits (dropping bombs at a hotel just after the kaiser had left) and the failed attempts by anarchists in Italy prior to WWII.
In my opinion you should have done more research and treat every hotel incident equally naming the amount of victims, who were targeted by whom and some background.