Friday, November 28, 2008

37 Australians missing


37 Australians missing

 


Left: A gunman of the Deccan Mujahideen and right, a commando shoots at terrorists inside a Jewish centre. Troops abseiled from helicopters before storming the building in an effort to save hostages. 







A rescued hostage smiles after being released from the Trident hotel


Left: A gunman of the Deccan Mujahideen and right, a commando shoots at terrorists inside a Jewish centre. Troops abseiled from helicopters before storming the building in an effort to save hostages.




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Matt Wade in Mumbai
November 29, 2008
Page 1 of 2 | Single page


THE Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said last night that he was worried about the safety of dozens of Australians missing after the Mumbai terrorist attacks.


"I'm deeply concerned for the wellbeing of our fellow Australians who we can't track down yet … I fear these [death toll] numbers may rise."


Indian officials say four Australians have died and a Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman said officials were "urgently seeking to confirm the safety and welfare of 37 Australians".


Two Sydney men are confirmed dead among the 143 killed in the attacks.


Seven Australians were among 93 people who walked free yesterday after being holed up in the Trident Oberoi Hotel in a 36-hour ordeal at the hands of gun-wielding terrorists.


Three IAG employees, Stephen Beatty, Mike Kelsall and Chen Ling, were among busloads of relieved guests, trapped in their rooms as terrorists occupied the hotel in southern Mumbai, who were able to leave yesterday after an operation by commandos.


The head of the national security guard, JK Dutt, said the Trident Oberoi was "under our control". A state minister, RR Patil, said there were 30 bodies in the hotel.


In an operation code-named Black Tornado, Indian authorities worked to gain control of the crisis yesterday, as commandos scoured two charred luxury hotels, searching for survivors.


The head of one commando unit said he had seen 50 bodies in the Taj Mahal hotel, including 12 to 15 in one room.


He said his troops had found plastic explosives and that the gunmen "had no remorse".


"Anybody and everybody who came in front of them they fired at," he said.


At a third location, a Jewish community centre run by the orthodox Chabad movement where remnants of the well-organised squads of attackers appeared to have dug in, commandos abseiled from a helicopter onto the roof and began an assault to retake the building shortly after 7am Mumbai time. A gun battle broke out inside the building and hundreds of shots were heard over the next few hours.


Amid indications that the sieges might be entering a final phase, fears were growing that the death toll would rise.


Smoke was still rising from one of the hotels, and people who escaped reported stepping around bodies.


Dozens of people, perhaps many more, remained trapped in the hotels, although it was uncertain whether any were being held as hostages.


Busloads of guests freed from the Trident Oberoi, including one carrying a baby, assembled at a checkpoint not far from the hotel, where some were reunited with loved ones.



Some of the guests talked on mobile phones as they walked past reporters without commenting. Others were carrying laptop bags or suitcases, but many came out only with the clothes they were wearing.

One of those brought out, Muneer Al Mahaj, said: "I am hungry and thirsty. Let me eat first. I have not seen a proper meal for the last 36 hours. I have been surviving only on biscuits … Last night I ran out of water, too."


There remained much mystery around the group behind the attack. Responsibility has been claimed by a group calling themselves the Deccan Mujahideen.


The Hindu newspaper said at least three of the terrorists were members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group.


The Pakistani Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, condemned the attacks in a telephone conversation with his Indian counterpart, telling him his country was also a victim of terrorism. The head of Pakistani military intelligence, Ahmed Shuja Pasha, will visit India to help investigations.


The move came a day after the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, said the atrocity was organised "outside the country" and warned against "neighbours" providing a haven to anti-India militants.


Two men who claimed to be among the gunmen called television stations to complain about the treatment of Muslims in India and in disputed Kashmir.


Mr Rudd said the attacks highlighted the need for vigilance. He said terrorism was "a cancer … which has to be eradicated. That is why our domestic counter-terrorism laws have to remain strong."


with agencies

http://www.smh.com.au/news/news/general/37-australians-missing/2008/11/28/1227491827729.html
Guests' night of horror in luxury hotel


November 28, 2008


Firefighters battle the blaze at the Mumbai hotel.

Firefighters battle the blaze at the Mumbai hotel.
Photo: AFP



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MUMBAI: It is one of the plushest hotels in India, if not the world, but for one night it became a terrifying battleground, complete with gun battles, explosions and a raging fire.


"That was, without doubt, the worst experience of my entire life," said one female guest after she was rescued by firefighters from Mumbai's famed Taj Mahal Palace hotel, which was caught in the middle of a multi-pronged militant attack across the city.


"It was a very, very painful six hours," said the woman, who lay on the floor of a hotel room with 25 other petrified guests while hostage-taking gunmen roamed the hotel and fought off special units of naval commandos.


"We really didn't know what was going on. But we could hear the army coming through the hotel. We heard the firing and the blasts."


Military units stormed the hotel in the early hours of Thursday morning to confront a handful of gunmen armed with assault rifles and grenades. During the encounter a huge fire broke out at the top of the hotel's historic old wing, trapping guests in their rooms. "In the end the firemen broke the windows of the room and we climbed down the ladder," the woman said.


One British guest told Indian television that he had been among a dozen people herded together by two of the gunmen and taken to the hotel's upper floors. "They were very young, like boys really, wearing jeans and T-shirts. They said they wanted anyone with British and American passports and then they took us up the stairs. I think they wanted to take us to the roof," he said, adding that he and another hostage managed to escape on the 18th floor.


Eight hours after the shooting began, there were still gunmen holed up in the Taj. One woman contacted on her phone said she and around 35 other guests were boarded up inside one of the rooms.


"We were shot at and we have one man who has a bullet wound in his stomach," she whispered over the phone. "He's bleeding badly and he needs to go to hospital."


The woman said security forces had been in contact with her group during the night. "They've been telling us to stay quiet and lay low. I think they're waiting for light to break."


Sajjad Karim, a British member of the European Parliament, was inside when the gunmen attacked the Taj. "I was in the lobby of the hotel when gunmen came in and people started running. There were about 25 or 30 of us. Some of us split one way and some another. A gunman just stood there spraying bullets around, right next to me. I managed to turn away and I ran into the hotel kitchen and then we were shunted into a restaurant in the basement. We are now in the dark in this room and we've barricaded all the doors. It's really bad."


A businessman, Ashish Jain, said he was having dinner with his friends at the hotel's rooftop restaurant, Souk, when the attack started. "When I paid the bill and tried to leave, the hotel staff said there were terrorists in the lobby and that we could not leave. There were 150 of us on the rooftop, including some foreign nationals.


"It was really alarming to be trapped there for over four hours. We could feel the building shake with the explosions. We could see the smoke and the fire. People were panicking and crying. And finally the army and the police came and secured the fire escape exit, and we could get out."


Agence France-Presse; Telegraph, London; The Washington Post

 


Sydney woman shot in Mumbai attack stable: father


November 27, 2008



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The father of a Sydney woman shot during the Indian terrorist attacks has praised her boyfriend, saying that if it wasn't for his quick thinking his daughter might have been killed.


Kate Anstee, 24, and her boyfriend David Coker, 23, were on the first day of an overseas trip to celebrate their graduation from university, and had been in Mumbai for only a matter of hours when they were attacked.


Ms Anstee's mother plans to fly to Mumbai on Friday to airlift her back to Australia as soon as possible after surgery on a bullet wound to her thigh.


The young Australian couple were shot when terrorists launched co-ordinated attacks across the city, killing up to 100 people.


They had arrived in Mumbai on Wednesday to celebrate their graduation from the Australian National University only hours before the attacks.


After dropping their bags off at their hotel, they headed to the Leopold Cafe, a tourist hotspot, when men burst into the cafe and opened fire, Ms Anstee's father Chris Anstee said.


"They put their bags down in the hotel in Mumbai and went out to the Leopold coffee shop, which is apparently listed in Lonely Planet as a cool place to hang out, and they were just sitting there and a whole lot of guys, four or five guys ... just opened fire with machine-guns," Mr Anstee told AAP.


"Dave has been very quick-witted and level-headed ... grabbed Kate and picked her up."


Ms Anstee was in intensive care in a stable condition, he said.


The bullet broke her femur and exited through the front of her thigh.


Mr Coker has flesh wounds to his legs after being grazed by bullets.


"It basically sounds like, as unpleasant as it has been, that it will be fine, and they're going to be airlifted back as soon as she has been allowed to be moved out of the hospital," Mr Anstee said.


"She is actually undergoing surgery, exploratory surgery and stabilisation surgery."


Mr Anstee said his wife Candy, from Greenwich in Sydney's north, plans to take the first Qantas flight to India on Friday to be with their daughter.


He praised Mr Coker, who is from Townsville, saying if it wasn't for his quick thinking his daughter might have been killed in the attack.


Candy Anstee said she was in a state of shock over what had happened.


"They were going for 11 weeks - to India, then Europe then the US where Katie was at uni for a year," she told Fairfax. "It was their first day there. They'd only gotten on the plane the day before.


"They were so excited about this trip, saving up for ages. We're in a state of shock."


Ms Anstee had just completed a commerce law degree in Canberra and planned to move back to Sydney after a seven-week holiday, her father said.


Teams of heavily armed men launched the attacks, which survivors said were aimed at killing Westerners, late on Wednesday.


Officials say at least 100 people have been killed, and at least 120 wounded, with an undetermined number of Western hostages still being held.


A previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the attacks.


AAP



Mumbai attacks 'almost at an end'



Indian forces claimed they would soon have Mumbai under full control after nearly two days of chaos and confusion that followed the terrorist attacks there.


Commandos ended a siege of the luxury Oberoi hotel while other forces descended from helicopters to storm a besieged Jewish centre.


After a chain of shootings across India's financial centre left at least 143 people dead and the city in panic General N. Thamburaj declared: "It's just a matter of a few hours that we'll be able to wrap up things."


Explosions and gunfire continued intermittently at the elegant Taj Mahal hotel, but officials said commandos had killed two gunmen inside the nearby Oberoi and ended the attack there.


"The hotel is under our control," J.K. Dutt, director general of India's elite National Security Guard commando unit said, adding that 24 bodies had been found. Dozens of people - including a man clutching a baby - had been evacuated from Oberoi earlier.


The airborne assault on the centre run by the ultra-orthodox Jewish outreach group Chabad Lubavitch was punctuated by gunshots and explosions as forces cleared it floor by floor.The commandos initially had control of the top two floors. It was not immediately clear if there were hostages inside or their fate.


Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed "external forces" for the violence - a phrase sometimes used to refer to Pakistani militants, whom Indian authorities often blame for attacks.


India's foreign minister ratcheted up the accusations over the attacks. "According to preliminary information, some elements in Pakistan are responsible for Mumbai terror attacks," Pranab Mukherjee said.


"Proof cannot be disclosed at this time," he said, adding that Pakistan had assured New Delhi it would not allow its territory to be used for attacks against India.


Earlier Pakistan's Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar denied involvement by his country: "I will say in very categoric terms that Pakistan is not involved in these gory incidents."


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