Bollywood: Terror In Mumbai By Terrorists

South Australian restaurateur Nick Papazahariakis - I saw a man executed in Mumbai
(NSI News Source Info) November 27, 2008: A PROMINENT Adelaide restaurateur has told of his horror at seeing a man executed in cold blood by terrorists in the Mumbai rampage.
Speaking to AdelaideNow from the Pancharatna Restaurant in south Mumbai a short time ago, Nick Papazahariakis described how he watched an innocent bystander shot by terrorists about 10m from where they were dining.Audio: I saw terrorist execution CLICK ON LINK TO LISTEN
He is in Mumbai for the wedding of his daughter Chloe, who is stranded with him in a restaurant as they wait for the all-clear from authorities.
"The terrorists stole a police car and then the police jumped into a taxi to chase them, and the terrorists killed a man at point-blank range about 10m from us," he said.
"The entire city of Mumbai is virtually in lockdown and there is a ring around it with police everywhere.
"There's about nine of us inside the restaurant with two or three staff. We are OK and are being looked after very well."
They have been stuck inside the restaurant for more than nine hours and are waiting for news from authorities before they can leave.
"We don't really know what's going on yet. It's a difficult situation to be in and with all the cars driving around we don't know if they're being driven by the police or the terrorists," said Mr Papazahariakis, who owns Chloe's Restaurant in Kent Town.
The group is keeping up-to-date with the latest news on the terror attacks by watching two televisions inside the restaurant.
In a lucky twist, Mr Papazahariakis said the group he is dining with were initially going to eat out at Leopold's Restaurant, which was one of the first sites targeted by terrorists.
"Because some of the people were too far away to meet us there, we decided at the last minute to come to this restaurant," he said.
"Then as we sat here watching the TV we heard that Leopold's was attacked by a taxi bomb, and was one of the first things that started all this happening.
"We feel it's fate that's brought us here so we just cross ourselves and hope that this can all be over soon.
"We're about 300m from a hospital, which apparently has about 40 to 50 hostages inside and we're between 500m and 1km from the Taj Mahal, where we had drinks before we came out."
Mr Papazahariakis, who is staying at the Marriott Hotel, is in Mumbai for Chloe's wedding to Bollywood star Puneet Vasishtha.
"The wedding is supposed to start tomorrow night and go for five days but we're not sure just yet whether we can proceed with it," he said.
Depsite the volatility of the situation, Mr Papazahariakis retained his sense of humour.
"The food is great but we're slowly running out of cigarettes," he laughed.
Ms Papazahariakis is among several stranded Australians to have got their witness accounts out to media, despite the horror and the desperate need to hide from Islamic fanatics hunting down tourists as hostages.
Ms Papazahariakis - who is in Mumbai ahead of her wedding to Bollywood star Puneet Vasishtha - told the Nine Network that Mumbai is in "total lockdown".
"I've just moved to this beautiful city to marry my husband in four days and I've got about 20 friends here for the wedding in the midst of all this chaos," Ms Papazahariakis said.
"The terrorists are on a rampage and are not stopping."
Ms Papazahariakis, 31, was speaking from the restaurant where her reception is to be held.
She said a nearby hospital had been bombed by terrorists and the death toll had reached 82, with at least 150 others wounded.
"They are targeting every suburb in this city but the most tragic thing is that for the first time ever they are targeting big-time foreigners and five-star hotels," she said.
"There have been a lot of bombs in India and they normally target marketplaces and the poorer society but where we are at the Taj Mahal Hotel, an historical hotel, they have eight foreign hostages.
"They've got hand grenades and police are very worried they are suicide bombers.
"They are on a rampage - it's full-on and they are not stopping."
Her father Nick - the owner of Chloe's restaurant at Kent Town - has told of his horror at seeing a man executed in cold blood.
A spokesman for his restaurant said Nick, Chloe and Chloe's mum Pat were in Mumbai for the wedding.
Another Adelaide tourist in Mumbai - Martin McCarthy, 18 - has told how sleeping in this morning may have saved his life.
TV star Brooke Satchwell is also among Australians trapped in the Mumbai hell zone.

Additional Info

Terrorists hit Bollywood hometown
Troops move in after at least 101 killed, 287 wounded
By Jonathan Landreth
Updated: Nov 27, 2008, 02:12 AM ET
BANGKOK -- The heart of Bollywood, the world's largest film industry by number of annual productions, was reeling Thursday from 16 coordinated terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, that killed 101 and wounded 287 overnight.

The five-star Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, an institution that is to Bollywood what the Carlton is to Cannes or The Beverly Hills Hotel was to Hollywood of a bygone era, was aflame in India's financial capital most of the night after young gunmen stormed the place shooting guests and demanding the identity of U.S., U.K. and other Western passport holders.

Six foreign nationals are reported among the dead, and by midday in India Thursday, the standoff at the hotel continued.

Australian TV star Brooke Satchwell, who is in Mumbai on a three-week shoot, was in a production meeting inside the Taj on Wednesday when gunmen stormed the hotel firing automatic weapons.

"We felt a little bit like sitting ducks," Satchwell told radio 3AW of Australia, adding that she and others hid in a hotel toilet stall until they were ushered past dead bodies in the lobby by hotel security and into the street, where chaos reigned.

Satchwell said she maintained contact with her colleagues trapped inside the hotel via mobile phone short text message.

The identities of dozens of guests unaccounted for in the Taj and another five-star hotel attacked, the Oberoi Trident, could include members of the global media and entertainment industries who over the years have frequented both establishments when paying visits to Bollywood to do business.

Fourteen of the 16 terror targets hit Wednesday night, including a movie theater, were downtown, in the southern half of Mumbai, far from most of the Bollywood movie studios in the northern half of the city of 19 million on India's West coast.

A spokesperson for Sony Pictures Entertainment said the studio would continue to monitor events and that as of midday, there were no known injuries to SPE employees or damage to SPE facilities.

The attacks cast a shadow on a major new cricket tournament scheduled to start across India on Dec. 3 and due to be broadcast by ESPN Star Sports, which last week announced a 10-year contract for worldwide broadcast rights.

Three Australian cricket teams canceled travel to Mumbai, ruling out their participation in the Twenty20 Champions League International tournament.Sharma Paras, ESPN Star's senior director of communications, said it was too early to be thinking about the tournament.

"We are shocked by the attacks and mourn the sad loss of lives in the Mumbai incidents overnight. We share in the worldwide concern about the safety of people still under threat," said Paras, adding that ESPN Star Sports and tournament organizers would be monitoring the situation. The attacks, which also targeted hospitals, the main Mumbai railway station and the popular tourist restaurant Cafe Leopold, occurred on day four of the 39th International Film Festival of India, the country's most prestigious annual cinema event. Organizers of the festival -- held in Panaji, 593 km (369 mi) south of Mumbai -- could not be reached for comment.The terror attacks come just weeks after Mumbai-based industrialist Anil Ambani spent $550 million to back Steven Spielberg in the formation of a new movie studio in close partnership with his company Reliance Big Entertainment.

Gunjan Bagla, a Los Angeles-based economist who advises The Walt Disney Co. in its work in India, said the attacks would further bind India and the United States together. "We are the world's largest democracies and the world's largest entertainment industries. The horrible attacks in Mumbai underscore the fact that dastardly opponents of freedom, peace and multiculturalism hate both countries in the same manner," Bagla told The Hollywood Reporter. The terrorist attacks were spread throughout the city's business district, with horrifying images of dead and wounded in the streets, the local train station and other sites hitting world media outlets. Images of the burning Taj hotel, flames leaping and plumes of smoke filling the air, were being broadcast hour after hour on the world's 24-hour news channels as the city went into a state of lockdown.

By midday in India Thursday, authorities had not released the names of the dead and wounded.

An organization calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen claimed it was behind the attacks, television channels said. The previously little-known group sent an e-mail to news organizations claiming responsibility.

"I guess they were after foreigners, because they were asking for British or American passports," said Rakesh Patel, a British witness who lives in Hong Kong and was staying at the Taj on business. "They had bombs."

"They came from the restaurant and took us up the stairs," he told the NDTV news channel, soot staining his face. "Young boys, maybe 20 years old, 25 years old. They had two guns."India has suffered a wave of bomb attacks in recent years. Most have been blamed on Islamist militants, although police have also arrested suspected Hindu extremists thought to be behind some of the attacks.

Hemant Karkare, the chief of the police anti-terrorist squad in Mumbai, was killed during the latest attacks, police said.In Washington, the White House and President Elect Barack Obama condemned the attacks.A European official was among the wounded.

"My hotel is surrounded by police and there are gunmen inside," European lawmaker Ignasi Guardans told Spanish radio from the Taj. "We are in contact with some deputies inside the hotel, with one in a room and another hidden in the kitchen. There's another official hurt and in hospital.

"Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil said there were around four or five attackers in each of the two hotels hit."They have attacked hotels, they have attacked the hospitals, they have attacked the railway station," he said, adding that two attackers had been killed and two arrested.