Mumbai attack could be replicated: FBI

Terming the Mumbai terror attacks as “successful” from the point of view of terrorists, a top US intelligence official has warned that such strikes could be replicated in the US and other parts of the world.

Warning that such attacks could be viewed by terrorists as a possible way of proceeding in the future, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert Muller said: “Intelligence and other security agencies will have to reinvigorate efforts to make certain that we’ve done everything we can to prevent such type of attacks”.

Delivering a speech on “Global Terrorism: The FBI's Role”, Muller said the Mumbai attack, which killed more than 170 people and wounded over 300, was an attack both highly coordinated and deceptively simple in its execution.

Muller, who took over the FBI just days before September 11, 2001, said the attack had displayed that “terrorists with large agendas and little money can use rudimentary weapons to maximise their impact.”

“It again raises the question of whether a similar attack could happen in Seattle, San Diego, Miami or Manhattan,” he said. Muller said although Al-Qaeda remained a threat to the US and worldwide, security planners “must also focus on lesser-known terrorists groups as well as home-grown terrorists”.

The FBI chief warned that “terrorist could be merely e-tickets away from the US”. The US, Muller said, was concerned with people and groups around the world that identified with Al-Qaeda and its ideology. He said the Mumbai attacks had brought to the fore the need for better coordination and cooperation among intelligence and security agencies of major countries like the US, India, Pakistan, the UK and others.

Responding to a question from the audience, Muller said: “If you look at the attacks over a period of time, you start with September 11, and it was box cutters. You didn’t even have weapons when it came to September 11. Yet you see, whether it be Fort Dix or Mumbai, the planning that goes into undertaking such an attack, which was to a certain extent successful in Mumbai, that does not escape the attention of those down the road.”