We condemn the act against humanity

Transport system with many people aboard was a soft target for the cold blooded series of well-coordinated attacks perpetrated on Thursday morning. The intrinsic vulnerability of such public concentrations to bombing assaults, either detonated or suicidal-type, remains the biggest challenge for anti-terror surveillance and preemptive strategies for any police force in the world. London police had, however, successfully nipped some in the bud, but this time the evil operatives sneaked through the defences. Nevertheless, it must be said in all fairness to the police, fire services and hospital authorities of London that they have done an excellent job of the relief and rescue operations.

While expressing our profound condolences for the victims and their families, we stress the need for every individual to raise his or her personal security antenna anywhere they might be over and above the high security alert being mounted by the law enforcement agencies.

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The recent experiences with the terror attacks in Madrid, Bali, Istanbul, Yemen and now London should wizen us about the ways of networked, or not-so-networked ideological terrorism. This is the first such attack on London aside from the IRA-related bombings of earlier times. But it is extremely saddening that a forward-looking, free-minded, liberal and cosmopolitan city like the British capital should have been a target of terrorist attack.

The perpetrators and their mentors must know what they have done in the name of ideological avenging and retribution; they have killed and maimed innocent people of differing colour, creed, faith, age and sex. They did not target any 'high and mighty' but the ordinary people who form the quintessential part of broad humanity. Every individual, every country today is a potential target of terrorism. The London massacre is not an act against Britain, nor the UK, nor the G-8, it's an act against the entire humanity. All such diabolic, yet cowardly actions must be severely condemned, censured and deterred with steeled resolve and equally resolute counteraction.

They are out to breed mutual hatred and suspicion across societies and communities. And, if we fall into the trap of finger-pointing and profiling after the tragedy which they have deliberately laid to drive wedges in societies we shall be willy-nilly playing into the hands of the vicious perpetrators. Let's beware of what they would gleefully love us to do.