As a sombre Israel buried Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives on Tuesday, details of the attack that killed the couple and four others have begun to emerge.

However, in the still murky accounts by the only two adult survivors of the assault on the Chabad-Lubavitch center and by Indians living nearby there is still no clear explanation of the terrorists’ aim in attacking a faceless Jewish centre on an unpaved backstreet of Mumbai.

On the day of the attack, the Holtzbergs were hosting a small group in the ultra-Orthodox centre. An unarmed Indian guard sat outside as five Jewish travellers dropped in for afternoon prayers, a kosher meal at the Holtzbergs’ table and a bed for the night.

Yocheved Orpaz, a 60-year-old Israeli, was en route to join her family on an Indian vacation. Rabbi Aryeh Leibish Teitelbaum, a 37-year-old American resident of Israel, and his friend Bentzion Chroman, 28, a dual US-Israeli citizen, were in India as part of their international work supervising the preparation of kosher food.

They were joined by David Bialka, a 52-year-old diamond trader and a frequent guest at the centre, on his business travels, and Norma Shvarzblat Rabinovich, a 50-year-old Mexican Jew visiting India on her way to start a new life in Israel.

Sometime after 9 pm on November 26, the centre came under attack by at least two terrorists. Rabbi Holtzberg telephoned the Israeli Consulate. “This is not a good situation,” the 29-year-old told security officer Ehud Raz before the line went dead.

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