Mumbai Chabad death toll up to nine

Excerpt from Ha'aretz: this morning:

9 dead in Mumbai Chabad house attack; Israel to help identify bodies
By Anshel Pfeffer in Mumbai and News Agencies

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak decided on Saturday evening to dispatch an Israel Air Force plane with teams of medical and forensic experts to Mumbai on Sunday to aid in the identification of victims of the terror attacks that rocked the Indian city, leaving at least 195 dead.

 

Israeli embassy representatives and rescue personnel have identified six of the victims killed in the assault that began Wednesday night across India's financial capital, including its Chabad center.

 

The Foreign Ministry said nine people - most Israelis, some dual citizens but all of them Jews - were killed in an attack on the Chabad house in Mumbai this week, part of a spectacular assault on symbols of luxury and foreign appeal across the city.

 

Authorities earlier on Saturday said Israel may have to fly crime-lab analysts to India for positive identification before the victims' remains can be flown to Israel for burial.

 

Authorities on Saturday named one of the Israeli victims as Yocheved Orpaz, 60, after her family identified her body on Saturday afternoon. Another woman was identified as a Jewish resident of Mexico, whose name has not yet been released.

 

The Chabad-Lubavitch movement confirmed Friday evening that an Israeli-born American rabbi, Gavriel Holtzberg, 29, and his wife Rivka, 28, were among the dead.

 

The Holtzbergs will be flown to Israel for burial, said Rivka Holtzberg's brother, Shmulik Rosenberg. A Chabad spokesman said they likely would be buried Monday.

 

Two other victims from the Chabad house who have also been positively identified are Bentzion Chroman, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, and Rabbi Leibish Teitelbaum, a U.S. citizen who lived in Jerusalem.

 

The carnage began Wednesday at about 9:20 p.m. with shooters spraying gunfire across the Chhatrapati Shivaji railroad station. For the next two hours, there was an attack roughly every 15 minutes - the Jewish center, a tourist restaurant, one hotel, then another, and two attacks on hospitals.

 

By Saturday morning the death toll was at 195, the deadliest attack in India since 1993 serial bombings in Mumbai killed 257 people. But officials said the toll was likely to rise as more bodies are found in the hotels.

 

Indian commandos ended the three-day rampage on Saturday after storming Mumbai's best-known hotel, the Taj Mahal.