Mumbai gunmen were like young 'boys', say eyewitnesses

Mumbai, Nov 27 (PTI) With Indian intelligence and security agencies still groping to identify the terrorists who have struck at the country's financial capital, three Australian victims have now come out describing them as "young boys."

The description came from two young Australian tourists,
David Coker (23) and his partner Katie Anstee (24), who were
among the first to come face-to-face with the terrorists in
metropolis' famous bar 'cafe Leopold' in Colaba.

"They looked just like boys and they were on a rampage --
It's a full-on."

David and Katie have arrived in the city to celebrate
their graduation and they went to eat at Leopold, when
terrorists struck.

"We have just sat down for dinner ordering food when it
seemed fire crackers were blowing up all around us and people
were screaming," the duo told the Sydney's Courier-Mail
newspaper telephonically.

Katie was shot in the leg with the bullet breaking her
femur while David was grazed by bullet and both had to flee.

David said, he had to virtually carry her girlfriend as
she couldn't move.

"We got into a taxi which took us to Bombay hospital. We
were, I think, the first people at hospital, which is where we
are now," they said.

Another Australian TV actress Brooke Satchwell also had a
harrowing ordeal to tell of her confrontation with another
group of terrorist boys in the city's landmark Taj hotel.

Satchwell hid herself in a two-by-three metre cupboard
for an hour to escape death.

Former star of soap opera 'Neighbours', told a radio
portal that she was inside the ground-floor toilets when the
attack happened and "everyone just froze".

"As I stepped into the bathroom I could hear machine-gun
fire start up in the lobby," Satchwell said.

"People started locking themselves into the toilet
cubicles, which clearly wasn't a very good idea. But we were
trying to find somewhere to hide," she said.

Satchwell, along with her boyfriend and about eight other
foreigners, has now been moved to another hotel in south
Mumbai.

"I can't even get my leg dressed, we can't go to the
airport, that's been bombed, we can't go to the police
centres, they've been bombed," Satchwell's boyfriend told the
Herald from the hotel.

Recalling her ordeal at the Taj Hotel, the actress told
the portal that hotel staff directed the group into the
service cupboard, where she waited for up to an hour, hearing
bursts of gunfire.

"Some of the hotel security came and ushered us very
quickly down the corridor and across the lobby, clearly no one
had a very good idea of what happened ... or where we were
meant to be heading at that stage," she said.

At least 20 Australians were in the nearby Oberoi hotel,
which also came under attack, all of them members of a New
South Wales delegation organised by the Department of State
and Regional Development.

A Forty-nine-year-old Australian was "brought dead" to St
George's Hospital in South Mumbai Wednesday night. His body
has been sent for a post-mortem.

At least 100 people have been killed and over 300 injured
so far in the multiple terror attacks across the financial
capital. Five star hotels, hospitals and Mumbai CST station
were among the key targets. PTI AKV