Moshe Holtzberg should be celebrating his second birthday with his doting mother and father today. Instead, he is in the care of grief-stricken relatives struggling to tell the toddler that he will never see his parents again.

Moshe’s parents, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, were among the five hostages killed in Nariman House, the Chabad Jewish centre in Bombay, during a two-day siege that ended yesterday when Indian commandos stormed the building, killing their two captors.

Moshe’s grandparents had flown to Bombay when they heard of the siege, hoping to be reunited with the whole family. Instead, they found themselves mourning their lost children and comforting an orphaned toddler.

Friends of the family said that they were preparing to celebrate Moshe’s birthday on Saturday evening, once the Jewish Sabbath was over. But as the day wore on and the siege continued, with gunfire and explosions rocking the Jewish centre for 12 hours, it became clear that the hostages might not survive.

Yesterday all five being held in the Chabad centre were found dead after the commandos stormed the building. Indian officials said that the hostages had been killed by the militants during the rescue effort.

Forty-eight hours earlier, the toddler had been whisked to safety by Sandra Samuel, a kitchen worker in the centre who also doubled as the boy’s nanny. Television stations showed images of Moshe being carried from the smouldering building with a dazed expression. He was wearing blood-spattered clothes and clutching a blue stuffed animal.

Ms Samuel said that she had seen four people lying unconscious on the floor of the building as she escaped, two of whom may have been Moshe’s parents. “The baby is OK, but I have no idea about the couple. Nobody told us anything. In the evening his mother always puts him to sleep and now he doesn’t understand what’s going on,” she said. “He is asking for his mother again and again.”

Rabbi Holtzberg, 29, and his 28-year-old wife moved from New York to Bombay five years ago to become the custodians of its Chabad House, one of a string of premises around the world set up to cater for Jewish travellers. The pair had joint American and Israeli citizenship.

Solomon Sopher, a friend of the Holtzbergs and president of the Baghdadi Jewish community in Bombay, described how the couple had doted on Moshe, the youngest of three, after losing his older brother. The Holtzbergs’ first two sons were born with terminal blood conditions. The eldest died and the second is in a critical state in a hospital in Israel.

Rabbi Holtzberg’s last phone call was made on Wednesday to the Israeli Consulate in Bombay, reporting that gunmen had entered the house. The line went dead in mid-conversation.

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