"Two if by Sea"

On April 18, 1775 Paul Revere made his famous ride from Boston to Concord to warn people that British troops were coming. The warning signal: “one if by land two if by sea” came from the clock tower of the old North Church in Boston. If the British were coming by land, one lantern would be lit. If the British were coming by boat, then two lanterns would be lighted. Paul Revere waited and watched the tower. Then at midnight he saw two lanterns. He knew they were coming by boat so he rode his horse as fast as he could to warn the colonists that the British troops were coming. This warning gave the colonists a chance to get their army ready to defeat the British troops

Just like Paul Revere who had received advance intelligence about the coming British attack, the Indian government was alerted before the terrorist siege. US intelligence agencies warned India in October of an attack on hotels and other targets in Mumbai, launched from the sea, and even listed specific targets, including the Taj Hotel. But unlike the warning received by Paul Revere, the detailed information was not acted upon prudently.

The important part of the story is not where the intelligence came from or how it was obtained, rather that it was ignored or not taken seriously. Indian authorities acknowledged that a warning was received and said it was passed to the navy, coastguard and police. But these agencies say it did not reach them. 'It appears to have been lost in the system,' one Indian official said.[i]

Terrorist attacks launched from the sea are nothing new. The deadly and notorious “Coastal Road attack” and the attack on the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv in the 1970’s in Israel would appear to have been the precedence for the concept of attacking land based targets from the sea. Similarities between the two attacks are striking.

Since the first maritime terror incident in Israel in 1953, there have been over 80 maritime plots either foiled or conducted against Israel involving the potential for great loss of live, or the actual murder of innocent civilians, security forces, naval personnel and foreign tourists. Attacks have ranged from small raids on Israeli towns and cities launched from the sea, deliberate suicide attacks on vessels, and plots to blow up cruise ships in foreign ports.[ii]

The first terror plot took place in June, 1974. Three Palestinian terrorists sailed in a small boat from southern Lebanon and landed on the beach in Naharia in northern Israel. The terrorists seized four Israeli hostages from an apartment building who they subsequently killed before being killed themselves in a gun battle with Israeli security forces.[iii] Eight other civilians were wounded in the attack. The result was the first attack on Israel conducted from a sea approach. Despite hardened security along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon and new maritime security measures, the PLO was still convinced of the potential for maritime terror attacks against Israel but needed to find a way around the Israeli obstacles. They turned to a tactic which is currently in use by the Somali pirates along the eastern coast of Africa. This tactic uses a “Mother Ship” to transport pirates far out to sea away from the coastal patrols and naval ships and then launch them in small dinghies which come out of nowhere to prey on unsuspecting merchant vessels. This tactic was used by pirates to attack the cruise ship Seabourn Spirit in November 2005. The PLO’s tactic was essentially the same. They would transport the terrorist fighters in a mother ship from ports in Lebanon and who then would come in from Israel’s ‘blind spot’ and attack Israel’s larger metropolitan cities.

Using the mother-ship tactic, the PLO launched an attack on Tel Aviv on March 5th, 1975. Eight terrorists were transported by ship from Lebanon and transferred to small boats who then proceeded toward the beach in Tel Aviv. They immediately raided the Savoy Hotel and barricaded themselves inside with thirteen hostages while demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel. As the standoff continued, an Israeli commando unit attacked the terrorists early the next morning. An intense gun battle erupted which resulted in the deaths of three soldiers and eight hostages. However, the commandos killed seven of the eight terrorists and captured one.[iv] The use of mother-ships to land terrorists on Israeli soil instilled fear in the Israeli population which regarded no place in their homeland safe from the terrorists. Additionally, as a result of the attacks on the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv, Israel’s hotel industry suffered greatly with bookings primarily by foreign tourists dropping off sharply. But the worst attack launched from the sea was yet to come.

In March, 1978 thirteen terrorists, landed just norh of Tel Aviv from two small boats launched from a mother-ship. Once on the beach, they immediately killed an American photographer and six other people they encountered before they seized two buses. In the process, they took 70 Israeli hostages, mostly women and children. The resulting massacre became know as the Coastal Road attack which eventually killed 37 Israelis and wounded more than 70 in the deadliest attack on Israeli soil.[v]

The terrorists had packed the hostages onto one of the hijacked buses and attempted to drive into Tel Aviv but were blocked by police. The terrorists exploded a hand grenade inside the bus which resulted in it catching fire. The resulting gun battle killed nine of the terrorists and two were captured. But because the plot had originally included 15 terrorists, 2 of which had drowned on stormy seas on the voyage to the shore from the mother-ship, Israeli security officials become alerted to the possibility that two of the terrorists of the Coastal Road attack had escaped.[vi] They called for a curfew between Tel Aviv and Nethanya, the first since 1968, to help locate the missing terrorists. It was suspended the following day when the total number of terrorists involved was determined.

The Israelis enacted several more stringent maritime security measures including increased naval patrols and aerial surveillance. These measures seemed to stem the threat of maritime guerilla attacks launched from southern Lebanon although several attempts were still made using this approach. The last successful attack was carried out in 1979 by the PLF who landed several terrorists in Naharia, in northern Israel in a rubber boat and murdered an Israeli father and his four-year old daughter before police were able to kill them in a gun battle. Abu Abbass, the terrorist leader of the PLF who would later mastermind the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985, said that the Naharia raid and murder was in protest against the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David peace accords.

As the facts of the Mumbai massacre unravel, it appears that the Indian authorities are alerted to possibility of more terrorist gunman who have either not been captured or accounted for, or died in the approach to shore as did two of the Coastal Road terrorists. Nine days before the assault, the terrorists who have now been identified as Pakistanis belonging to a group of Muslim extremists from Kashmir, sailed from Karachi, Pakistan in a Mother-ship. They soon intercepted an Indian fishing trawler named Kuber. The lone terrorist captured after the raid admitted the terrorists boarded the boat and killed the four crewmembers and dumped their bodies overboard. They apparently kept the Kuber’s captain alive at least until he safely navigated the boat close to Mumbai. A local Mumbai fisherman said that he witnessed the killing of a fisherman aboard another fishing boat just before the killing spree began. The terrorists had slit the captain’s throat.

The terrorists then loaded a small rubber boat with grenades, automatic weapons and headed toward shore. Indian Police discovered the boat which curiously had equipment for at least 15 including jackets and toothbrushes. It has been confirmed that 9 terrorists had been killed in the ensuring gun battle and one captured. What has puzzled investigators is the presence of over 15 blankets and the same number of “winter jackets” and toothbrushes on board Kuber. These jackets have been described as not ones used by “regular fishermen.” Investigators have also found two engine covers and a second raft case on the fishing boat. This leads to the possibility of another raft that may have been used.

Prior to the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985, Israeli Intelligence had warned the intelligence services of Italy and several other friendly governments more than six months before the hijacking that terrorist groups had been training to hijack a ship, although they could not identify a target or a specific terrorist organization. While advance intelligence may not have prevented the eventual attack on the city of Mumbai, the advance warning given that an attack was imminent, especially given that a target, the Taj Hotel was specified, may have prevented the deaths of innocent victims. The Taj Hotel, while it apparently had received some warning and implemented additional security measures, dropped them a short time after because they were disruptive to hotel guests. The Mumbai terrorists had prepared themselves for at least a year before the attack and like their Muslim brethren in al-Qaeda, were determined to take as many lives as possible in the attack before being martyred.

Just as Israel learned to strengthen their coastal defenses and intelligence gathering capabilities through numerous deadly attacks on their homeland, so too can we be reminded of the vulnerability of the sea being exploited by not only crazed terrorists, but criminals and pirates alike. Two if by sea is a time tested naval strategy which has obviously been learned very diligently by these entities.


[i] “Massacre in Mumbai: Under doctors' care, the gunman who carried out the hospital attack” by David Williams, December 1, 2008, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1090719/Massacre-Mumbai-Under-doctors-care-gunman-carried-hospital-attack.html

[ii] Akiva J. Lorenz, “The Threat of Maritime Terrorism to Israel”, Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), October 1, 2007 pg 6

[iii] Ibid, pg 8

[iv] Ibid, pg 9

[v] Ibid, pg 10

[vi] “Bodies of Coastal Road Massacre perpetrators to be handed over”, Israel Matzav, July 2, 2008, http://israelmatzav/. blogspot.com /2008/07/bodies-of-coastal-road-massacre.html; “Israel has agreed to turn over to Hezbollah in exchange for the bodies of kidnapped IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, the bodies of the perpetrators of one of the worst terror attacks in Israel's history: The Coastal Road Attack. The bodies of two Palestinians who hijacked an Israeli bus in Tel Aviv in 1978, will be handed over in the prisoner swap with Hezbollah, the Fatah-affiliated Dalal Al-Mughrabi Brigades announced on Tuesday. Dalal Al-Mughrabi was killed in the ensuing battle with Israeli troops on March 11 1978 and Yehyah Muhammad Skaf died later in an Israeli jail. The Brigades said in a statement that the bodies had been kept in a mortuary for the past 30 years.”