Mauritian I-cards, explosives recovered from Taj

Mumbai, Nov 28 (PTI) Indian Navy's elite Marine Commandos
(MARCOS) have recovered a Mauritian national's identity card
from the ruck sack of a terrorist, who escaped from the Taj
hotel room, after an encounter with the security forces.

"We have recovered a rug sack of a terrorist, who
escaped, after an encounter with the MARCOS and we found an
identity card of a Mauritian national," Marine Commandos team
leader, who was part of the operation, told reporters here
Friday.

The ruck sack also contained Chinese made grenades,
seven ammunition magazines, 400 spare rounds of ammunition,
seven credit cards of different banks, dry rations and USD
1,200 and Rs 6,840 from inside the rug sack.

The recovered items were later handed over to the
Mumbai police, the team leader said.

Indicating that the terrorists had done a recce of the
targeted landmarks before their attack, the MARCOS leader said
it was because of their knowledge of the building that the
terrorists could escape from the hotel room after the
encounter.

He said they had noticed only three to four terrorists,
who were probably operating from different floors, as they
were very well versed with the outlay of the Taj hotel, where
they were holed up for most part of the 40-hour operation.

"Terrorists were hurling grenades and firing from
different floors and we could not see them because of the
darkness. But they were operating with ease," he said.

Describing the physique of terrorists, the MARCOS leader
said they were not of a "big built" and were below thirty
years of age.

"They were wearing T-shirts and looked to be below 30
years and were of normal built," he said.

The MARCOS leader said the team had to face a problem in
dealing with the terrorists inside the hotel as they did not
know much about the building and had to take the help of the
hotel staff to operate there.

"We had to find our way out as we did not know the layout
of Taj. The hotel staff helped us to find our way inside
there," he said, indicating that the security forces were
ill-equipped before an operation of this magnitude was
launched.

The team could not even get access to the CCTV monitoring
room that could have helped it in finding the exact location
of the terrorists.

"When we tried to enter the CCTV room, it was full of
smoke and entering it was not possible and terrorists were
also continuing with their fire," the team leader said.

The MARCOS leader said terrorists were taking advantage
of the darkness inside the hotel and continued firing whereas
they had to move ahead with caution to avoid civilian
casualties inside there.

"They were firing all over and people were getting
killed. We were also firing back at them but we had to be
careful as civilian casualties are to be avoided," he added.

Giving an estimate of the number of hostages, injured
and dead inside the hotel at the time when MARCOS moved in,
the team leader said: "We think there were over 200 hostages
inside the hotel at that time. We found five to six injured
people also there, who were later evacuated and there were
around 50-odd people lying dead over there." PTI