On the night of November 26, 2008, 10 strange-looking men carrying large backpacks hijacked a fishing boat bound for Mumbai at sea, killed the captain, threw his body into the sea, and then steered the boat and took advantage of the night to board the coast of Mumbai.
Fishing boats that quietly enter Mumbai
They carried AK-47s and a large number of grenades in their backpacks in order to launch an unprecedented attack on the Mumbai city area.
Mumbai seaside
As soon as they came ashore, they began to move separately, starting at 9:30 p.m., first attacking the Sivaji railway station, the largest railway station in Mumbai, India, and their strategy at that time was to throw a few grenades at crowds of people who were hiding everywhere.
The largest Sivaji railway station in India
A mess after the attack on the train station
After the attack on the train station, they quickly rushed to the next place, at which time half of Mumbai's police arrived at the train station. The thugs used a "move away" strategy because their real target was not the train station, and they did the same thing as they passed a local market, with Mumbai police sending heavy troops to the market.
So the Mumbai police were as exhausted as headless flies all night.
The Indian police were exhausted
Map of the mob's attacks, with the red line showing the mob's route and the blue dots showing the attacked buildings.
The terrorists were rampant, and they planted bombs at the police headquarters in Mumbai's southern district, which made the Mumbai police extremely panicked. The police were almost all on the move, and they had no idea where the mob was targeting or how many of them there were.
A Mumbai police officer on the street with a nervous look
The terrorists carried a lot of grenades and threw them into crowded places, such as bars and markets, along the way, so that the whole of Mumbai was frantically running for their lives that night, and the whole process was disrupted, and many people did not know what was happening.
One of the terrorists who was filmed by surveillance, as can be seen from his facial expression, has completely killed the red eye, and their purpose is to kill 5,000 people in Mumbai.
A thug
They strafed wildly in the street, people began to flee to the southern sea, and then these 10 terrorists fought and converged, and after they attacked 5 locations, they gathered together, and they ran with the people on the street, no one knew that they were terrorists.
Messy Mumbai
What no one expected was that the real target of these thugs was the Taj Mahal Hotel.
Taj Mahal Grand Hotel
Built in 1898, this luxury hotel is known as "a diamond on the Arabian Seashore" and is the most luxurious hotel in Mumbai and india.
The exterior of the grand hotel
The hotel was built during the British colonial period in India by Tata, known as the "Father of Indian Industry", the founder of the Tata Group, India's largest company.
Tata
Since its opening, Taj Mahal has become the most luxurious hotel in India, with a total of 6 floors, 565 rooms, each room on each floor has a balcony, and since it is facing away from the sea, every guest has a view of Mumbai Bay in the room.
Hotel room
Facilities on site
However, one night in 2008, everything that happened changed here.
Enter the hotel
At 00:30, the mob came to the hotel door disguised as fleeing citizens, and the hotel doorman thought that these people were fleeing for their lives and let them in.
Surveillance captured mobs entering the hotel
As a result, after they entered the hotel, they quickly threw a grenade in the lobby and banged! Everyone was frightened, and they calmly closed the door at this time and locked it back with chains.
When they entered the hotel, they had no intention of going out, and the carnage began. They first killed the security guards, then the guests, and the two front deskmen were not discovered by them because they were hiding under the stage.
Their hiking bags were filled with magazines and grenades
The police did not know at this time that the terrorists had entered the Taj Mahal Hotel, and although the occupants of the hotel heard grenades and gunshots, they also thought it was from somewhere else, because the night was too chaotic, sirens, ambulances, explosions.
The situation downstairs of the hotel that night
The terrorists began killing people room by room in the hotel, leaving 4 people in the hotel lobby, guarding the police who might rush in.
They slaughtered guests one by one
Two people hiding in the front desk quietly called the police, but the police did not rush over immediately.
On the side of the hotel lobby is a small restaurant, and when the mob opened fire in the lobby, one of the waiters in the restaurant quickly turned off the lights and doors of the restaurant and told the guests to hide under the table to keep silent, and dozens of people in this restaurant were not detected by the terrorists.
Inside the hotel
The waiter called the hotel's head chef, and the head chef, Raghu Deora, knew about the hotel's condition.
Hero Chef
Because the hotel's kitchen was on the ground floor and accessible only through an employee staircase, the terrorists didn't find it at first, and there were 15 cooks and waiters. They could have escaped from the kitchen back door at first.
Chef Della told the hotel staff at this time that we can't just ignore the hotel guests, we have to find a way to save these guests.
Hotel kitchen staff
After discussing countermeasures, they decided to transfer the guests to the ballroom on the 6th floor of the hotel, because this ballroom had no windows and the door was strong, where they could wait for the arrival of the police.
The door of this restaurant is facing the small door of the staff staircase, so the guests quietly enter the staff staircase under the guidance of this waiter, and then join the kitchen staff on the negative ground floor, who first hide in the kitchen.
Then a waiter quietly followed the staff stairs upstairs to see if it was safe, and then led everyone to the sixth floor.
Hotel stairs
At this time, the terrorists were still slaughtering room after room, they usually knocked on the door to pretend to be waiters, but some people did not open the door, so it was more difficult for them to break into the room.
Surveillance captured thugs
The 4 terrorists in the hotel lobby found that there were two people hiding under the front desk, so they pointed their guns at them and asked them to call the upstairs room, saying that they were hotel employees, but in fact, there were terrorists standing at the door, as long as the guests opened the door, they would shoot and kill the people inside.
Hotel reception
After a few phone calls, the two front desks couldn't bear to fight again, so they were killed by terrorists.
Enter the ballroom
The previous waiter walked down the staff stairs on the first floor to the sixth floor, and found that the terrorists were completely unaware of the existence of the staff stairs, so he returned to the first floor kitchen and led everyone to the sixth floor quietly.
Together with the kitchen staff, the guests made it to the sixth-floor ballroom, and then they locked the door behind them.
Hotel banquet hall
At this time, it had been 1 and a half hours since the terrorists had entered the hotel, and the Mumbai police had finally arrived at the hotel door, but they did not know the number of terrorists inside the hotel, so they did not enter the hotel for a long time.
The Mumbai police department was ordered to wait for the arrival of Indian security forces, a rapid reaction force in India that specializes in terrorist attacks, while they were still in India's capital, New Delhi, 1,100 kilometers apart, and the plane also needed to fly for 1 hour and 45 minutes.
Indian Security Forces
If you wait for the arrival of this force, I am afraid that the guests in the hotel will be killed by terrorists, because the gunshots inside can be heard outside the hotel. So, a few policemen outside the hotel decided to rush into the hotel first to rescue the hostages.
Five of the policemen outside rushed into the hotel, but as soon as they entered the hotel, they were spotted by 4 gunmen on the second floor of the lobby, threw a grenade at them, and then began to shoot at them in a frenzy, and 3 of the 5 policemen were killed on the spot.
Hotel lobby
The remaining two policemen started from the stairs to go upstairs, and one of the terrorists upstairs, who had reached the 6th floor, found the people in the banquet hall and then frantically shot at the door, at which time the two policemen began to shoot at the terrorist, injuring him, but was found by the terrorists who followed up, and they had to return to the stairs.
Finally, the terrorists threw two grenades to blow open the door of the banquet hall. The ballroom on the sixth floor of the hotel was on fire, and the whole of Mumbai could see it.
Banquet hall
It was 5 a.m., 5 hours after the attack on the hotel, and the security forces still hadn't reached the hotel, supposedly because they were stuck in the road. The people in the banquet hall could not sit still, because the gate was about to be blown open, and they ran to the other door of the banquet hall, trying to open this door and flee downstairs when the terrorists entered the gate.
Hotel lobby staircase
But the hotel's staircase is open, circled and looped, so that when the guests escape, they become the target of terrorists, many of whom are shot in the process of escaping.
However, this escape still allowed many people to survive.
Guests after escape
Terrorists continue to carry out "room hunts", but they have fewer and fewer bullets and grenades.
Security forces arrive
At 7 a.m., the security forces finally arrived at the Mumbai Hotel, where they set up a sniper point on the outskirts of the hotel, then formed a squad and rushed into the hotel, first killing the 4 members of the hotel lobby and then starting to go upstairs.
The remaining 6 terrorists hid in two rooms, 306 and 308, and the security forces began searching one by one, while rescuing those inside.
Indian Security Forces
Finally, after a fierce battle, it was not until 8 p.m. the next night that 9 terrorists were finally killed and the last terrorist was captured alive.
The whole hotel was also reduced to rubble.
Hotels after the battle
Finally the surviving thug was interrogated, and the police asked him, how many people have you killed, and the man said, I don't know, I know I'm going to keep firing.
The last thug
The police asked, what is your plan?
He said that if there is no plan, it is to kill.
The policeman asked, what other operations have you been involved in before?
He said he only knew he would die after this action.
This person is only 18 years old, and the average age of these terrorists is 22 years old, so it can be said that they are very young people, but they have been indoctrinated with such evil ideas that the people they kill are demons.
summary
This serious terrorist incident, known as India's "9/11 Incident", caused a total of 195 deaths and 295 injuries, including 22 foreign passengers and 4 police officers.
The next day of the event
The reason why only 10 people caused such huge casualties in this incident and made the entire Mumbai police regiment turn around was because some people in India were stepping on the spot, cooperating, and informing these terrorists of the location and action of the police, so this action was also related to the extremist forces in India.
Finally, in the backpack of one of them, a detailed layout plan of the hotel was found, which is generally inaccessible to outsiders, indicating that all this is not accidental.
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