Word: hotels
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...officer reported that the commandos had trapped three terrorists on the top floor on the hotel. The rest of the suspects were on the ground floor, but he was not sure how many were in the building altogether, estimating between seven and 10. When asked whether they were trying to take any of them alive, he almost smiled at the question. "If they're alive, it's just coincidence." (See pictures of the days of terror in Mumbai...
Soon after the officer spoke, the fighting appeared to get exponentially worse. Between 3:30 and 7 p.m. there were at least a dozen huge blasts coming from inside the hotel. Many of them were immediately followed by volleys of gunfire. There were also smaller blasts - the sound of grenades. The larger blasts were most likely the National Security Guard commandos setting off explosives to clear sections of the hotel. The officer would not confirm that, but it was exactly the same blasts I would hear and see later in the day at Nariman House, the residence...
...explosions were all part of a process that the Indian authorities call "sanitizing" the floors - basically blasting them out to make sure there are no terrorists left. It's difficult to do in a hotel as large as the Taj. There have been injuries among the commandos. At 5:48 p.m., I saw first aid personnel rushing into the hotel. The blasts are doing further damage to the building - there was new smoke coming from the dome on the roof, and for a while, a new active fire burning in one of the second level rooms. The fires were still...
Amidst all this, there is very little official information on the events of the last couple of days. There have been no briefings by the Army or police since the announcement of the end of the Oberoi Hotel encounter earlier this afternoon. And so in the vacuum, there are rumors. The involvement of the Nariman House and the ostensibly Israeli hostages within churned up unconcfirmed speculation about Israeli commandos taking part in the operation. This afternoon, there was a rumor reported by at least one of the local television stations that there were new attacks - blasts at four locations...
Indian security forces began storming the Oberoi hotel in Mumbai, the first of the three hostage sites to be cleared, at around 11:30 a.m. local time on Friday. Within half an hour, the first batch of released hostages were emerging. By 2:30 p.m., it was over. Two terrorists were killed, and security forces began combing the hotel looking for people trapped during the fighting...