The Hindu : Front Page : Endgame in Mumbai, death toll could be 200

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Front Page

Endgame in Mumbai, death toll could be 200

Praveen Swami

Fighting continues, Jewish centre witnesses carnage; 200 people rescued from Trident and Oberoi hotels

— Photo: AP

STORMING OPERATION: Commandos of the National Security Guards rappel down on to the roof of Nariman House in Mumbai on Friday.

MUMBAI: Even as the special security forces and the police continued to battle terrorists at the Taj Mahal Hotel in south Mumbai, hundreds of hotel guests trapped at the Trident Hotel and the Oberoi Hotel were brought out to safety on Friday.

Operations to rescue four Israeli nationals, including Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who were being held at a Jewish religious centre, ended tragically. All of them were killed by the terrorists. One of the several NSG commandos who, backed by Mumbai Police and Indian Army personnel, had exchanged fire with the terrorists through the day, also lay dead. Also killed were the two terrorists who had taken over the centre on Wednesday. On Friday morning, the NSG had used a helicopter to lower commandos on to the roof of the centre.

Toll projection

(According to PTI, Minister of State for Home Sri Prakash Jaiswal said on Friday night that the death toll in the terror strikes could reach 200. “So far, 123 people have died. But once the bodies are collected, the number of deaths might go up to 200,” he said. He added that the security forces’ operation at Nariman House would not have taken long but for the eagerness of the government to keep the number of casualties to the minimum. “It was an easy operation for the security personnel and they could have completed it in much less time. But our efforts were to ensure that casualties were minimum,” he said. The country is safe and so is Mumbai, he said adding “there is no danger to the country.”)

The Chabad-Lukovich religious centre was also meant for Jewish visitors from Israel. Several explosions were heard during the day. NSG officials said that earlier television reports that some of the hostages had been rescued were inaccurate.

Loner’s battle

— Photo: AP

Relief at the end of the ordeal for father and child.

Fighting flared periodically through the day at the Taj Mahal Hotel, where a lone injured terrorist continued to battle National Security Guards commandos. NSG Director-General J.K. Dutt said that the “stage had been set for the final phase of the operation.”

A Mumbai journalist and a bystander were injured when a terrorist opened fire on crowds which had assembled in the Gateway of India plaza, adjoining the hotel.

Earlier, NSG commandos succeeded in eliminating the two suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists who had taken positions inside the Oberoi Hotel and Trident Hotel in the Nariman Point area, opening the way for the rescue of upwards of 200 guests and visitors were trapped in the adjoining hotels during the fighting were brought out to safety.

Mumbai Police authorities set up a centre to register the survivors, who are believed to include the nationals of over 20 countries, at the Air India building in Nariman Point.

The police recovered the bodies of 24 people killed in the fighting, most of whom were thought to have died when terrorists burst into the building firing from assault rifles and lobbing grenades.

Six other bodies were recovered from the buildings earlier. NSG officials said two assault rifles, a pistol and several unexploded grenades were recovered from the two terrorists killed during the fighting.

NSG experts said the rescue operation under way in Mumbai was unprecedented in its scale and intensity. “Nowhere in the world,” a senior NSG officer told The Hindu, “has any force ever attempted the rescue of hundreds of hostages from multiple high-rise buildings in a heavily built-up area. We have often rehearsed hostage-rescue drills, but nobody had ever anticipated that we would ever be engaged in an operation of such a magnitude.”

According to the officer, clearing a single room in a typical one-house hostage rescue operation would take an average of three minutes. “But here we are dealing about a concrete rabbit-warren which offers perfect cover for a terrorist.”

Large-scale counter-terrorism rescue operations have often had tragic outcomes. For example, a 1979 Saudi Arabian operation at the Grand Mosque in Mecca left about 250 hostages dead. Later, in 2002, an effort to free hundreds of Moscow theatre patrons from Chechen terrorists cost the lives of 128 hostages.

IANS reports:

Expressing outrage at the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the American Jewish Council (AJC) has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, expressing the community’s solidarity with India. “We strongly condemn these senseless and cowardly attacks and stand in solidarity with the people and the government of India at this time, as we have long stood with India and its sister democracies in the struggle against hatred and violence,” the AJC said in the letter to the Prime Minister. “As this tragedy is still unfolding, we understand that a number of people are being held hostage, and we join you in hoping for their safe and quick release,” the AJC said.

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