By ANTARA News,
Washington : The State Department said on Monday that six US citizens had been killed and two wounded in the attacks on Mumbai.
“In terms of numbers of dead, I believe that number is six. Two Americans injured,” State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood told reporters when asked for an update of the US casualty toll. He did not list the condition of the injured.
Wood added that the US Consulate in Mumbai has been “working around the clock to monitor injured Americans, help arrange transport or burial of deceased Americans” and help others find shelter.
“Consular officers repeatedly visited hospitals to look for injured Americans. Individual consular officers have been assigned to assist the families of each of the deceased Americans,” Wood said.
The consulate has also issued emergency passports for those who lost them, and offered information and other aid to help Americans leave India, he added.
The consulate, the embassy in Delhi and the State Department “have responded to an estimated 6,000 phone inquiries as of November 29, adding the department has also worked with the FBI and other agencies to help US citizens, he said.
The State Department did not identify the victims in the wave of attacks blamed on Pakistan-based Islamic militants that have left at least 172 dead and close to 300 wounded.Nor could it confirm whether any of the six were dual nationals.
The Synchronicity Foundation, a meditation community outside Charlottesville, Virginia, said two of their members, a father and daughter, had been killed at the Oberoi Hotel.
And a Jewish outreach group said a New York-based rabbi and his wife had been killed in an assault on the group’s center in Mumbai.
Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, who was born in Israel and moved to New York as a child, and his Israeli wife, Rivka, were the directors of Chabad-Lubavitch of Mumbai, the community said.
The couple’s son Moshe, who turned two on Saturday, was rescued from the attack by their nanny, and has now been handed over to his grandparents, who live in Israel.