SA team frees Mumbai hostages

2008-11-27 16:11

Johannesburg - Gunshots broke out and the crowd in the famed Taj Mahal hotel panicked, but five excruciating hours later, a private South African security guard said his team succeeded in evacuating about 120 guests.

"We heard some gun shots. We barricaded the restaurant and we moved everybody into the kitchen," recalled Faisul Nagel, who happened to be on the 25th floor of the hotel tower when the attack began.

As gunfire and explosions rattled the five-star hotel, he and the six others who came here from South Africa on his team rushed the guests from the posh dining room lined with windows and glass doors.

"We heard some loud noise, so we opened up the window and we saw people running all around the place," Nagel told AFP by telephone in Johannesburg. "We realised there was a terrorist threat."

Armed with knives and meat cleavers

His team, which had come to India to provide security for the Indian Premier League's cricket championships, led the guests into the kitchen and later into a conference room that provided better safety.

Using tables and refrigerators to barricade themselves in, Nagel said they armed themselves with the only weapons they could put their hands on: knives and meat cleavers.

"We basically put the lights off in the restaurant just to create an element of surprise. And we armed ourselves with kitchen knives and meat cleavers and we directed ourselves to any entrance that led to the restaurant," he said.

"We monitored the two lifts and we could see there was activity on those lifts. It kept coming up and down (and) we waited in case anybody came up," Nagel said.

"They did not come up, but there was a lot of activity. We heard an explosion and automatic gun shots," said this guard from Nicholls Steyn and Associates.

Little information

Bob Nicholls, the security firm's British director, was also in the hotel during the attack on Wednesday, when at least 100 were killed.

"It was difficult to get information in the first few hours," he said.

Their team finally made contacts with the hotel's security chief. Faced with the threat of a fire engulfing the hotel, with a blaze already raging in part of the original hotel, they decided to evacuate.

"The people were very afraid. We briefed them of what we were doing," Nagel said.

"I told the security manager of the hotel to tell the police not to shoot," he said. "We walked everybody down the fire exit at the back of the hotel very quickly. We got them out safely," Nagel said.

He later left the site, after making sure that all of the people he evacuated could find shelter in other hotels or with friends and family.

Dozens of women were among the guests, including a 90-year-old grandmother who had trouble walking.

They had no choice but to carry her out in a chair, which they carried down all 25 flights of stairs.

- AFP