Jerusalem, December 2:

Israelis today began burying the six Jews killed in the murder spree in the Indian city of Mumbai, the grimness of the occasion deepened by the conviction that the victims were targeted because of their religion.

The six died when gunmen struck the Chabad House, the Mumbai headquarters of the ultra-Orthodox Lubavitch movement, on Wednesday night. After a two-day standoff, four Israelis, an American Jew and a Mexican Jewish woman were dead. The Mexican woman had planned to immigrate to Israel this week. Several thousand ultra-Orthodox mourners, most of them bearded men with sidecurls garbed in long black coats and black hats, packed the main square and narrow alleys of Mea Shearim, a large religious neighbourhood in Jerusalem, for the funeral of Leibish Teitelbaum. A US citizen who lived in Jerusalem, Teitelbaum was in Mumbai last week supervising the preparation of kosher food.

Loudspeakers blared, “May God avenge them.”