Brooklyn Couple Killed in Mumbai Terror Attacks

Victims of the insane. God rest their souls.

An ultra-orthodox Jewish group based in Brooklyn confirmed Friday that a New York rabbi and his wife were among the dead in a series of terrorist attacks in India that have claimed more than 150 lives.

Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, who ran the movement's local headquarters in Mumbai, India, were killed during a hostage standoff at the center, said Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, a spokesman for the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. The couple's toddler son, Moshe Holtzberg, was rescued Thursday by an employee and is now with his grandparents.

For the past two days, the five-story headquarters of Chabad in Mumbai has been besieged by terrorists, with Indian commandos rappeling from helicopters in an attempt to root them out. A series of explosions and fire rocked the building and blew giant holes in the wall.

Authorities said three other hostages and two gunmen were also killed but they weren't immediately identified.

Elsewhere in Mumbai, two other Americans were killed:

A father and his teenage daughter from a Virginia community that promotes a form of meditation were among those killed in the terrorist attacks in India, a colleague said Friday.

Alan Scherr, 58, and daughter Naomi, 13, were in a cafe Wednesday night in Mumbai when they were killed, said Bobbie Garvey, a spokeswoman for the Synchronicity Foundation. The U.S. State Department confirmed their deaths on Friday morning.