Smoke, gunshots and grenades

Alex Chamberlain, a British website director, was having dinner with a friend at the Oberoi hotel when a gunman burst in (Alexi Mostrous writes).

“He ushered us up three flights of stairs before he told everyone to put their hands on the wall and get out our passports. He said he wanted British and Americans. Luckily, before he got to me, two women started crying, which distracted him. I thought this was a nightmare. The whole thing was unreal.

“There was smoke coming up the stairs, gunshots above us, the sound of grenades going off. I thought if we got to the roof they’d shoot all the white people, so when I got to the 18th floor I decided to escape. I beckoned to the guy behind me and went through a side door and crouched under a table. I was convinced the terrorist had seen us. I was waiting for him to open the door and kill us both.

“The smoke was getting thicker and thicker. I couldn’t breathe. After about 15 minutes we agreed we had to go down. When we got out of the hotel I felt amazing. Not safe but absolutely relieved. I called my girlfriend and told her I loved her.”

‘We thought it was fireworks’

Sir Gulam Noon did not duck when he heard the first sounds of gunfire in his suite on the third floor of the Taj Mahal hotel (Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester write).

“We thought we were hearing wedding fireworks – it sounded as though crackers were being let off in the lobby,” he said. He looked out of the window expecting a fireworks display, but instead “we saw men rushing into the building and people fleeing”.

The man known in Britain as the Curry King – he sells 1.5 million ready meals a week – had booked a table at the restaurant, but he felt slightly ill so changed his mind and decided to have dinner in his room with his brother and two business associates. “It probably saved my life. The restaurant was the first place the terrorists went.”

A bomb went off. “The whole building shook. It was like an earthquake, then there were more explosions. I was about to run outside but I looked through the peephole and saw a man with an AK47 coming down the corridor.”

He rang the duty manager. “Amazingly he was still at his desk. He told me to jam the door. He said men with guns were looking for Americans and British people. I am British and proud of it.” The television stopped working. “Then the air-conditioning went off. The room became very hot. We couldn’t open the windows, they were sealed.”

His mobile still worked and his family rang to warn him that a fire had broken out on the upper floors. “I could see the smoke coming along the corridors. The manager told us to put wet towels by the door. The smoke kept coming in. The army were amazing, they were running up and down the corridors but they weren’t interested in getting the guests out. They were trying to find the terrorists.

Times Recommends

• 'Radio Rancid' is scourge of Obama
• French gulp as global warming alters wines
• Colton, the barefoot boy bandit, outfoxes sheriffs