Attacks on two luxury hotels -The Taj and Trident- in the country's financial capital of Mumbai have drawn attention again to the fact that hotels are a soft target for terrorists who want to capture world attention to their causes.
The Mumbai incident follows previous attempts on hotels elsewhere in the world. A few months back terrorists drove a truck full of explosives into the lobby of Marriott Hotel in Islamabad [Images], near Pakistan's parliament, killing at least 40 people and injuring another 200.
In 2005 in Jordan, Al Qaeda [Images] conducted a series of coordinated bombing on three hotels in the capital city of Amman on November 9. The blasts at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, the Radisson SAS Hotel, and the Days Inn killed 60 people and injured 115 others. One of the hotels was hosting a wedding with hundreds of guests.
In October 2004, bombings at three sites on the east coast of the Sinai peninsula killed 34 people. The Egyptian government said the mastermind was Palestinian and the targets appeared to be Israeli tourists.
On August 5, 2003, a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb outside the lobby of the JW Marriott Hotel in Indonesian capital Jakarta killing 12 people, including one Danish, one Dutch and two Chinese and injuring 150. The hotel was viewed as a symbol of Western power and thus been the prime focus of terrorists.
Another reason why hotels are being targeted is because of the kind of clientele, experts say.
Mumbai being the financial capital of the country, and at the centre of economic decision making, numerous important delegates check into one of the seven five-star hotels in the city.
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