Nine foreigners were killed and 11 injured

Nine foreigners were killed and 11 injured


Nine foreigners were killed and 11 injured in the multiple terror attacks here, hospital sources said on Thursday. The dead included an Australian, a Briton and a Japanese who have been identified with their nationality while four have been identified without nationality, they said. However, three others were yet to be identified, sources said.

The Italian Foreign Ministry in Rome said among the dead was an Italian national, identifying him as Antonio de Lorenzo.

All Italians who were in hotels or other areas attacked in Mumbai have been contacted “except for one or two people,” the country’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told a local TV channel.

Japanese national Tsuda, who was working with Mtsui Marubeni Liquefied Gas Co, died at a hospital after being shot in the leg, stomach and chest at the Trident hotel, the company’s vice-president Hajime Tamaki said in Tokyo. Another of its employees, 44, fell and suffered light injuries as he fled the scene, he said, without identifying the injured by name.

The Australian, Braid Gilbert Taylor (49) was brought dead to St. George Hospital in south Mumbai, sources added.

Among the 60 injured admitted to the Bombay Hospital, 11 foreigners were from different nationalities, Ashish Tiwari of the hospital said.

The injured foreigners are from Australia, U.S., Norway, Spain, Canada and Singapore.

Seven Britons injured

Seven British citizens were injured in the attacks, British High Commissioner in India Sir Richard Stag, said.

Britain would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with India in countering terrorism, he told reporters outside the Taj hotel. Sir Richard described the attacks as “appalling and unjustifiable.”

2 MEPs escape

A London report said two European Parliament members escaped indiscriminate terrorist firing at the Taj hotel, but their whereabouts were not known.

Conservative member Sajjad Karim and Erika Mann, a German Socialist, were part of a delegation of European parliamentarians from a trade committee staying in the Mumbai hotel for meetings ahead of an European Union-India summit.

Karim, 38, spoke to Sky News by mobile phone of his ordeal and attempts to hide from the terrorists in the basement of the hotel until his mobile phone battery ran out.

Mann, 57, was reportedly hiding in the hotel’s kitchen from where she told a colleague who called her on her mobile: “It is too dangerous to talk.”

Mr. Karim told Sky News that he and others had fled from machine-gun fire and had no idea why the hotel was targeted.

A German national has been confirmed killed and several injured in Mumbai, the Foreign Ministry said in Berlin.

“We have to assume that other Germans have been affected,” a spokeswoman said. — Agencies

Japan expresses solidarity

P.S. Suryanarayana reports from Singapore:

Countries across East Asia, especially those whose nationals were killed or wounded or trapped at the sites targeted by terrorists in Mumbai, have expressed solidarity with India and offered anti-terror cooperation. A Japanese businessman was killed on the spot and his associate wounded at a hotel as they were about to check in. Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, expressing shock over the carnage, said Japan was “willing to work together with India” in taming terrorists.

Speaking immediately after news trickled in that two Australians were injured, Acting Foreign Minister Simon Crean, described the terrorist strikes as “an appalling assault on the people, and the stability and the democracy in India.”