| Page 2 of 3 < > |
In Just Minutes, Mumbai Was Under Siege
|
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
"It seemed like they were in a hurry," he said. "It was as if they wanted to shoot as many people as they could even though this was not their main target. Their motive might have been to divert the police, who have a station across the street, to keep them occupied as they headed to the Taj hotel."
The back entrance to the Taj, where the attackers went next, is about a three-minute walk from the Leopold through a narrow alley bounded by rug shops, street-food vendors and a pharmacy.
Bharat Waghela and his older brother were in their family's pharmacy when they heard shots being fired from the road. Their oldest brother, Subash, came running from across the street to pull down the store's metal shutters when the gunmen appeared in the alley and began firing indiscriminately into some of the shops. Subash was hit in the abdomen and left hand.
"My brother fell down and was lying in a pool of his blood," Bharat Waghela said. "When the two gunmen left toward the Taj, we took him to a clinic and then to a hospital."
Subash died later that day.
Most of the Taj's security guards, some of whom were armed, are concentrated at the hotel's front entrance. The two attackers who passed the Waghela pharmacy joined two gunmen who had come down another alley, according to police. Together they entered the Taj through the back, rushing past the hotel's elegant swimming pool before entering its main lobby.
About two miles from the Leopold Cafe and the Taj is Mumbai's main rail station, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, or CST, where two young men in black T-shirts, backpacks slung across their chests and backs, started firing their assault rifles indiscriminately and lobbing grenades onto the train platforms, killing 48 people and wounding many more.
In the station's main waiting area is the Re-Fresh restaurant. During the attack, its plate-glass windows were riddled with more than a dozen bullet holes, leaving huge, spidery cracks near a pastry case.
"I was sitting in our upstairs cafe when I thought the electricity had cut out," said Irshad Khan, 26, one of the restaurant's managers. "There was a lot of gunfire. I looked outside and saw people running helter-skelter. It was total chaos. At least 12 people died right on the spot."
Sebastian D'Souza, a photographer for the Mumbai Mirror newspaper, took several photos of the attackers as they rampaged through the station.
"There were armed policemen hiding all around the station, but none of them did anything," D'Souza told reporters afterward. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them! They're sitting ducks,' but they just didn't shoot back."
According to several eyewitnesses, the assailants were in the station for up to 20 minutes before leaving through a side entrance. Back on a main street, they opened fire on several nearby targets, most of them within view of the side entrance, including the Times of India and the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai buildings.
