Commandos stormed a Jewish centre and a luxury hotel in Mumbai on Friday to retake them from militants on the third day of attacks on the Indian financial capital in which at least 155 people have died.
Elite troops slid down ropes from helicopters to breach the Jewish centre, killing two gunmen but failing to save the lives of five hostages, including a New York-based rabbi and his wife. The commandos also cleared the Trident-Oberoi hotel and freed 143 hostages, including foreign tourists and businessmen who emerged with harrowing stories of the bloodshed inside. Two gunmen were killed. But at least one gunman was still holed up in the Taj hotel. Explosions and gunfire erupted regularly as he dodged the commandos through a maze of corridors and rooms.
Indian commandos were still battling to secure Mumbai’s historic Taj hotel in the early hours of Saturday, with one or two heavily armed militants holed up inside, security officials said. National Security Guard chief JK Dutt told reporters he believed the operation would be completed during the night. Security officials said troops were facing off with one or two gunmen. An AFP reporter at the scene said the sound of sporadic gunfire and explosions continued to come from inside the hotel.
An Indian state minister said one of the militants arrested was a Pakistani national. But Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi called on India not to play politics. “This is a collective issue. We are facing a common enemy and we should join hands to defeat the enemy,” he told reporters during a visit to the Indian town of Ajmer. The seizure of the Jewish centre ended just before dusk on Friday when commandos slid down ropes onto the roof from helicopters and blew a hole in the outer wall.
“The operation has been successful,” force commander Jyoti Krishna Dutt told reporters afterwards. “On the second floor, we found three bodies of hostages. They had been killed long before. We found two terrorists on the fourth floor and neutralised them. We also found two bodies of hostages there,” he said. One soldier was killed. The dead hostages included Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, the Brooklyn-based directors of Chabad-Lubavitch of Mumbai, the Chabad’s New York headquarters said. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, speaking in Jerusalem, said: “The fact that the assault happened at a Chabad House symbolises more than anything the fact that this assault targeted Jews, Israelis. “When they attacked the hotels, they looked for those guests who had American, British, Israeli citizenship. In other words, it looks like there was a deliberate intent here.”
At the Trident-Oberoi Hotel, commandos killed two militants and freed 143 guests earlier in the day. Foreigners and Indians, some dragging their suitcases, trickled out of the five-star hotel after their ordeal ended.
Police said 24 bodies had been found inside the Taj hotel. But one militant, thought to be wounded, remained inside. “He is moving in two floors. There is a dance floor area where apparently he has cut off all the lights,” Lieutenant-General N Thamburaj told reporters. It was possible that he had two hostages with him, he said. The head of an elite commando unit, his face masked by a black scarf and sunglasses, said he had seen 50 bodies in the Taj, including 12 to 15 in one room. Indian media reported early on Saturday up to 155 people have been killed and 327 others have been wounded in a series of coordinated attacks by Islamic militants in Mumbai.
Mumbai police chief Hasan Gafoor put the death toll from the attacks at 130. Some 284 people have been wounded. At least 17 foreigners, including three Germans, three Americans, one Australian, a Briton, one Canadian, two French, an Italian, a Japanese, a Singaporean and a Thai, were among the dead, according to various governments.
“When you have a terrorist shooting down people in stations and on roads, how can anyone feel safe any more?” said shopkeeper Pankaj Angre. Nine of the militants who attacked targets across India’s financial capital Mumbai and took guests hostage in two luxury hotels have been killed, a top state official told reporters on Friday. “Nine militants have been killed and one arrested,” Maharashtra deputy chief minister RR Patil said.
US nationals remain in danger following a series of coordinated attacks in Mumbai, the US State Department said on Friday, after confirming that two Americans had been killed and two others injured. “There are still Americans at risk on the ground,” said spokesman Gordon Duguid. US President George W Bush was on Friday watching the situation in Mumbai closely, his spokeswoman said.
Militants who seized hostages at a Mumbai hotel relayed a message through Singapore that Indian forces should not storm the building, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday.
“The terrorists demanded that the Indian authorities refrain from storming the Oberoi hotel or else they would harm her,” Jai Sohan, consular director of the foreign ministry, said after revealing that Singaporean hostage Lo Hoei Yen, 28, had been killed.
The United States is sending investigators to India to help unravel who was behind the terrorist attacks. A US investigative team headed to Mumbai on Friday, a State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the US and Indian governments were working out final details of the cooperative effort. The official declined to identify which agency or agencies the team members came from.