Rabbi, wife die in siege at Jewish center

BOMBAY | The attackers came by sea, on a small skiff, and made their way in the dark through narrow streets to a yellow, six-story apartment building called Nariman House, a Bombay center for Jewish life.

Forty-eight hours later, a series of loud explosions signaled a bloody finale to a siege that ended with the deaths of at least five people, including a New York rabbi and his wife.

Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, 29, and his wife, Rivkah, 28, were among the more than 150 victims of the terror attacks that began in Bombay Wednesday night, Rabbi Zalman Schmotkin told the Associated Press in New York.

He said that an employee of the ultra-Orthodox center rescued the couple’s son, Moshe, who was taken to his grandparents and turns two on Saturday. A second son was with relatives in Israel when the attack occurred.

The Holtzbergs were born in Israel, but the rabbi, who lived in Brooklyn as a child, had dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship.

Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of the educational arm of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, told the AP that the couple moved to Bombay five years ago to run a synagogue and help people overcome drug addiction and poverty.

“As emissaries to Bombay, Gabi and Rivky gave up the comforts of the West in order to spread Jewish pride in a corner of the world that was a frequent stop for throngs of Israeli tourists,” Rabbi Kotlarsky said.

On Friday as the Jewish Sabbath fell, ZAKA, an Orthodox Jewish group, began collecting blood and body parts to prepare the remains for a proper Jewish burial. Authorities did not immediately identify the other three victims - a woman and two men.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel’s Channel 1 television that “some of the bodies were tied up.”

“To judge by the accompanying signs, some of the people were killed a good number of hours previously,” he said.

It remained unclear when the hostages died and why members of the Indian government’s elite National Security Guard decided to risk a shootout with the gunmen.

The black-clad commandos, dispatched from New Delhi, arrived in Bombay early Thursday, replacing army soldiers who were wearing jungle camouflage, twigs affixed to rounded helmets.

The commandos, armed with Rambo-style bow knives, Glock pistols and submachine guns, waited on a rooftop 30 yards from Nariman House as a gaggle of politicians, journalists and cameramen gathered around.

Every hour or so, police would clear the street, but bystanders quickly refilled surrounding alleys, lanes, rooftops and roads.

Less than a mile away, smoke rose steadily from the opulent Taj Mahal hotel. Nariman House is in a working-class neighborhood, where half-built buildings are scattered amid English Colonial-era gems.

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