An Indian media report said a previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen had claimed responsibility for the attacks in e-mails to several media outlets, which it said defied verification. One must always be suspicious when a ‘new’ terrorist organization crops up, as there are some Indian media and analysts suggesting immediately after the horrific attacks that a nasty Islamist organization based in Lahore, Pakistan, and with links to al Qaeda, may be to blame.

There is another more straightforward speculation for Wednesday’s attacks—revenge. A group calling itself the ‘Indian Mujahideen’ has thus far claimed responsibility for attacks in a number of different cities over the past several months. The terrorist group sent a warning in September expressing anger over recent raids by the city’s antiterrorism squad (ATS). The chief of Bombay’s ATS was also killed Wednesday night in a gun battle with some of the assailants.

The fatal attacks in Bombay set up a new wave of antiterrorism chorus, when the U.S-led Western countries pledged to continue strengthening partnerships with India and other nations to root out and destroy terrorist networks, and also greatly unsettled the international community. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, in a statement, that no cause or grievance can justify the indiscriminate attacks against civilians, and called for perpetrators to be brought to justice swiftly.

The savage terrorist attacks in Bombay also pointed to the modern international terrorism featuring strengthened capability of planning, advanced equipment and techniques, globalized networks, and indiscrimination in their attacks against civilians and civil services. Since the Sep.11 terrorist attacks, the international terrorist groups have all these years posed a rampant threat to the whole world, constantly launching not merely sporadic but massive attacks in both developed and developing countries. China, for example, foiled some attempted terror attacks this year, incited by secessionists from within and outside of China, in its leading up to the summer’s Olympics. The abortive attacks sounded a warning alarm to the Chinese government and people that terrorism is nothing but a substantial menace to the national solidarity and state stability. China has all along proved a positive and active force in the international antiterrorist campaigns.

To effectively combat terrorism, the international community will have to look into both its root causes and its ‘symptoms’, and therefore it takes time and involves painstaking efforts to uproot the maliciousness threatening the global security. Resorting to force and arms seems not invariably to be a sound means in a long run, as the way using violence against violence could breed orgies of hatred and more brutality. Only when a new international order is built up on the basis of peace, fairness, ration and harmony, and generally acceptable to different interest parties, will there be the likelihood that terrorism dies out.