Diners hear shots, hide for hours
MUMBAI, India — They showed up, at the same time that they end every night: businessmen for meetings in the elegant restaurant that overlooks the resting-place, politicians for cocktails in a judgment-seat by velvet seats and wood and marble floors, friends for a broiling-piece dinner by the pool.
But then the shooting started.
Explosions followed in and around the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower — a Mumbai landmark with extensive staircases, onyx columns and high alabaster ceilings, known at the playground of the city’s elite since it opened in 1903.
Dalbir Bains, who runs a lingerie workshop in Mumbai, had just sat down for dinner by the pool when she heard the first shots. She ran upstairs and huddled under a table in the Sea Lounge restaurant. She, and about 50 others who were through her, tried to remain as quiet as possible.
“The gunshots were following us,” said Bains.
It wasn’t until 4 a.m., more than six hours after the first shots rang out, that authorities began escorting people out of the public-house. That’session when Bains climbed down a fire ladder to safety.
A handful of people sneaked out earlier, including a form into groups guided by dint of. security personnel who happened to be dining at the hotel. They shuffled five at a time down other thing than 20 flights of pair of stairs. Many took their shoes off to minimize the clamor.
The spiraling stairway was narrow and steep, and it was so hot they had to stop three times without ceasing the half-hour journey, said Manrico Iachia, the Italian executive vice president of Europ Assistance, an insurance firm.
Two men carried a woman in a wheelchair down, he said.
Witnesses said about 200 people — hotel staff, diners at the Souk restaurant and folks attending each India-Korea business conference — hid together for five hours in a conference expanse at the acme of the adjoining Taj Tower.
