The young gunmen roaming the corridors of two luxury hotels in Mumbai were shooting wildly, but they knew exactly what sort of guests they intended to take hostage.
“They told everybody to stop and put their hands up and asked if there were any British or Americans,” Alex Chamberlain, a British guest at the Oberoi/Trident hotel, said after fleeing his captors via a fire escape. “My friend said to me, ‘don’t be a hero, don’t say you are British.’”
Gunmen held an unknown number of hostages inside the hotel and at the iconic Taj Mahal hotel overnight and through much of yesterday.
Chamberlain told Indian television that he and other guests had been herded together by the gunmen and taken up to the upper floors of the hotel.
Rakesh Patel, a guest at the Taj, said that “they were after foreigners, because they were asking for British or American passports.”
“They came from the restaurant and took us up the stairs,” Patel, a British citizen based in Hong Kong, told the NDTV news channel, his face blackened by smoke.
“They were very young, like boys really, wearing jeans and T-shirts,” he said, adding that he and another hostage managed to escape on the 18th floor.
One woman staying at the Taj told how she lay on the floor of one room with 25 other guests as gunmen fought special commandos.
“That was, without doubt, the worst experience of my entire life,” she told reporters. “It was a very, very painful six hours.”
“We could hear the army coming through the hotel. We heard the firing and the blasts. In the end the firemen broke the windows of the room and we climbed down the ladder,” she said.
Military units stormed the Taj hotel in the early hours of yesterday morning to confront a handful of gunmen armed with assault rifles and grenades.
In the encounter a huge fire broke out at the top of the hotel, trapping some guests.
US citizen Marilyn Ernsteen, who was with her husband Joseph, said they thought the gunfire was fireworks until hotel staff said they should lock themselves in their rooms and turn off the lights.
“I didn’t know what was going on. I was terrified,” she said.
Taking only her passport and purse, she and her husband, who are from Chicago, escaped from their fourth-floor room through smoky hallways and out a fire exit.
Australian television actress Brooke Satchwell, a former star in the soap opera Neighbours, hid inside a small cupboard when violence erupted at the Taj.
“As I stepped inside the lobby gunshots started to go off,” she said. “It was really terrifying. There were people getting shot in the corridor. There was someone dead outside the bathroom.”
The head of the Madrid government and a British member of the European Parliament were inside the Taj when the gunmen attacked but escaped unhurt.
“I saw one man on foot carrying a machine gun-type of weapon — which I then saw him firing from and I saw people hitting the floor, people right next to me,” MEP Sajjad Karim was quoted as saying by the BBC.
LIMITS: While China increases military pressure on Taiwan and expands its use of cognitive warfare, it is unwilling to target tech supply chains, the report said US and Taiwan military officials have warned that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could implement a blockade within “a matter of hours” and need only “minimal conversion time” prior to an attack on Taiwan, a report released on Tuesday by the US Senate’s China Economic and Security Review Commission said. “While there is no indication that China is planning an imminent attack, the United States and its allies and partners can no longer assume that a Taiwan contingency is a distant possibility for which they would have ample time to prepare,” it said. The commission made the comments in its annual
DETERMINATION: Beijing’s actions toward Tokyo have drawn international attention, but would likely bolster regional coordination and defense networks, the report said Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s administration is likely to prioritize security reforms and deterrence in the face of recent “hybrid” threats from China, the National Security Bureau (NSB) said. The bureau made the assessment in a written report to the Legislative Yuan ahead of an oral report and questions-and-answers session at the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The key points of Japan’s security reforms would be to reinforce security cooperation with the US, including enhancing defense deployment in the first island chain, pushing forward the integrated command and operations of the Japan Self-Defense Forces and US Forces Japan, as
‘TROUBLEMAKER’: Most countries believe that it is China — rather than Taiwan — that is undermining regional peace and stability with its coercive tactics, the president said China should restrain itself and refrain from being a troublemaker that sabotages peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday. Lai made the remarks after China Coast Guard vessels sailed into disputed waters off the Senkaku Islands — known as the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) in Taiwan — following a remark Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made regarding Taiwan. Takaichi during a parliamentary session on Nov. 7 said that a “Taiwan contingency” involving a Chinese naval blockade could qualify as a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, and trigger Tokyo’s deployment of its military for defense. Asked about the escalating tensions
The Ministry of Economic Affairs said it plans to revise the export control list for strategic high-tech products by adding 18 items under three categories — advanced 3D printing equipment, advanced semiconductor equipment and quantum computers — which would require local manufacturers to obtain licenses for their export. The ministry’s announcement yesterday came as the International Trade Administration issued a 60-day preview period for planned revisions to the Export Control List for Dual Use Items and Technology (軍商兩用貨品及技術出口管制清單) and the Common Military List (一般軍用貨品清單), which fall under regulations governing export destinations for strategic high-tech commodities and specific strategic high-tech commodities. The
RSS