The war on terror in Mumbai was finally wrapped up 60 hours after a band of terrorists struck at various locations with three gunmen killed this morning at the landmark luxury Taj Hotel, bringing the operation to a close.
NSG commandos, who believed that a lone terrorist was holding out since yesterday, launched a final assault in the early hours of this morning and killed three terrorists to secure the old heritage area of the hotel opposite the Gateway of India.
"Three terrorists have been killed but the operations are still on. Until we search the entire hotel room by room and satisfy ourselves that there are no more terrorists I will not declare the operations are over.
"I don't know whether all of them have been killed. I can say only after completing the operations," Director General of NSG, J K Dutt, told reporters outside the hotel.
During the night, terrorists holed out in the hotel engaged in a fierce gun battle with security forces as some places in the first and the ground floors of the 565-room building set afire by terrorists amid explosions in the over 100-year-old heritage complex in the Colaba area.
Dutt said that the terrorists set on fire some rooms whenever they felt they were being cornered as a diversionary tactics.
An intense gun battle raged overnight at the Taj as commandos closed in on terrorists holed up in the heritage structure. Five huge explosions were also heard in the building in a span of 30 minutes.
The Marine commandos (Marcos) had surrounded the Taj where NSG personnel were carrying out the operation to flush out the terrorists. Multiple rounds of automatic gunfire and blasts from inside the building shattered several hours of relative calm.
The western metropolis witnessed unprecedented terror attacks, including on another luxury Trident-Oberoi hotel and a Jewish centre, on Wednesday night when heavily-armed terrorists struck killing over 160 people and injuring hundreds.
The might of the Indian security forces had to be brought in to rid these landmark in the country's financial capital of the heavily-armed suspected Pakistani terrorists, but the costs were heavy on both sides.
When the Oberoi was cleared of the terrorists yesterday, as many as 30 hostages were found dead.
Source: PTI
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