08 January,2009 10:17 AM IST | | Agencies
U.S. cities are vulnerable to an attack like the gun-and-grenade assault that terrorized Mumbai for three days and killed 179 people, the White House homeland security adviser said on Wednesday.
Ken Wainstein told a Washington think tank that the Mumbai attacks in November showed the effectiveness of a low-technology coordinated assault on an open city.
"You can envision that happening in any American city, and it's chilling when you think about it," Wainstein told policy makers and others in a speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "That's the kind of thing that is all too realistic anywhere in the world."
Wainstein's comments reflected a growing unease among international security officials that the Mumbai attacks may have established a new model for terrorism.
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He spoke a day before government and local officials were to testify to Congress on the Mumbai attacks. The Senate Homeland Security Committee on Thursday will consider the response by Indian officials, and what is needed to prevent such an attack in the United States.
"We're going to go through where they screwed up, and how do we fix it -- how do we make sure we don't make the same mistakes?" committee spokesman Seamus Hughes said.
