Oberoi హోటల్స్ internasional

Trident-Oberoi Hotel survivors tell a tale of panic, then relief
Siege ends at Jewish center after a day of fierce fighting
Published: November 28, 2008
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MUMBAI:

Most of the scores of victims of Mumbai's 48 hours of terror were Indians: diners, waiters, business folk, police officers who fought the assailants.

But an outside world riveted for two days by images of burning luxury hotels and streets crackling with gunfire and explosions also had eyes for its own: the British entrepreneur in his 70s who spoke to the BBC while cowering under a table in his hotel, only to die hours later of gunshot wounds; the young Japanese businessman felled while checking in to his hotel; the German who apparently plunged to his death.

Among the most closely followed fates were those of a young rabbi and his wife, both Israeli-born Americans who moved from Brooklyn, New York, to Mumbai in 2003 to run a Jewish center there.

Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, headed a Chabad center known as the Nariman House, one of 3,500 outposts of the Lubavitch Hasidic movement around the world. They managed a synagogue, led religious classes and reached out to a community.

On Friday, they were declared dead after commandos stormed the center, which had been seized by gunmen in the coordinated assault on at least 10 locations Wednesday night. "Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg made the ultimate sacrifice," the Chabad-Lubavitch movement said in a statement. "Their selfless love will live on with all the people they touched."
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Firing grenades and automatic weapons, the gunmen took the Holtzbergs and at least six other people hostage Wednesday night, according to friends of the couple. Moshe, their 2-year-old son, and a cook, managed to escape about 12 hours into the siege, the friends said, and the boy was in the care of grandparents who flew in from Israel.

The dramatic end to the siege of the Chabad center began Friday morning. Commandos slid down ropes from a hovering Army helicopter, landed on the roof and made their way inside.

Throughout the day, a gun battle raged inside the center, echoing the thump of explosions and the rattle of automatic fire. Later, Reuters reported that the commandos had blown up the outer wall of the center, and that it was then that the bodies of five hostages were discovered.

It was not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen or if it was an accidental hostage scene. But if the center lacked the size and prominence of the attackers' other targets, the news of its fate reverberated among Chabad homes from Australia to Tunisia.

Israeli officials said Friday that three other bodies were removed from the Jewish center. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said two men who supervised Jewish dietary laws were apparently among the dead. The third corpse was that of an unidentified woman.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of Israel depicted the Israelis and others as victims of terror. "Our world is under attack, it doesn't matter whether it happens in India or somewhere else," she said. "There are Islamic extremists who don't accept our existence or Western values."

The Foreign Ministry reported that four Israelis were among captives freed from another attacked site, the Oberoi Hotel.

Survivors of the siege at the Oberoi, exhausted but safe Friday afternoon, told how they had barricaded themselves in a room and endured 36 hours of terror after attackers invaded the luxurious seaside hotel Wednesday night.

James Benson, 36, an Australian lawyer based in London, was one of six foreigners escorted from the Oberoi and herded onto a bus through a crush of journalists and Indians searching for family members.

Speaking to a reporter aboard the bus, Benson explained how an ordinary night was overwhelmed by desperate fear. On Wednesday, he said, he was trying to find out why his room-service order had not arrived.

"I rang up and they said, 'No, there's no room service, there's been an emergency,"' he said. "But they wouldn't say what it was. So I decided I would go downstairs."

Benson left his room on the 27th floor around 10:15 p.m. When he reached the 14th floor, he said, other people were running back up, and an Indian man named Ravi said that there had been a terrorist attack and that there was a lot of blood on the 14th floor. "I got very scared," Benson said.

As they climbed the stairs together, there were two large blasts that rattled windows in the hotel.

Sebastian Gonzalez, an information-technology specialist from Toronto, said he was in his room on the 23rd floor when he heard blasts. He rushed to the stairs and ran into Benson and Ravi on their way up. Gonzalez told them to take shelter in his room, along with two other terrified guests - an American flight attendant for Northwest Airlines who identified himself as Daryll, and a Frenchman who identified himself as Philippe.