Do you know anyone caught up in the Mumbai unrest?
Email the Herald Newsdesk
KEY POINTS:
Australian actress Brooke Satchwell hid inside a tiny bathroom cupboard for about an hour to escape gunfire in the Indian city of Mumbai.
The 28-year-old said she was heading back inside the Taj Mahal Hotel, where she was staying with some friends, after having a cigarette when she
heard gunshots.
At least 78 people were killed in a series of attacks apparently targeting foreigners late on Wednesday, as heavily armed Islamist militants hit two luxury hotels and other sites.
"I came back in and went via the bathrooms which were on the ground floor next to the lobby and as I stepped inside the lobby gunshots were started go off," she told Network Ten.
"There was probably about six of us in the bathroom and everybody froze and then I think adrenalin kicked in and it became pretty clear what was going on.
"People started to lock themselves in the toilet cubicles (but) at that point that didn't seem like a very clever idea, there was no way out."
Instead, Satchwell opted to hide inside a cupboard, about two metres by 1.5 metres.
"It was really terrifying," she said.
"There was people getting shot in the corridor. There was someone dead outside the bathroom."
Hotel staff shepherded people from the bathrooms, but Satchwell said they didn't seem to know what to do.
"It was chaos, nobody really knew what was going on, I don't think they knew where anybody was or what the plan was."
After running out onto the street and into another hotel, the former Neighbours star said she ran down some "back lanes and some back stairs" to get back to the Taj Mahal where she is now watching news feeds.
The streets were not safe, especially for tourists, she said.
"It became very clear that being out and about was not very safe and also foreigners were a strong target."
At least two Australians have been injured in the series of shootings and blasts, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says.
An enhausted group of foreigners at the Taj Hotel told their stories of survival to news agency AFP:
"That was, without doubt, the worst experience of my entire life," said one woman guest after she was rescued by firemen.
"It was a very, very painful six hours," said the woman, who had laid on the floor of a hotel room with 25 other petrified guests, while hostage-taking gunmen roamed the hotel and fought off special units of naval commandos.
"We really didn't know what was going on," she told AFP.
"But we could hear the army coming through the hotel. We heard the firing and the blasts."
Military units stormed the hotel in the early hours of Thursday morning to confront a handful of gunmen armed with assault rifles and grenades who had taken hostage an unknown number of guests - many of them foreigners.
During the encounter a huge fire broke out at the top of the hotel's historic old wing, trapping numerous guests in their rooms.
"In the end the firemen broke the windows of the room and we climbed down the ladder," the woman said.
One British guest told local Indian television that he had been among a dozen people herded together by two of the gunmen and taken up to the hotel's upper floors, AFP reported.
"They were very young, like boys really, wearing jeans and t-shirts," the guest said.
"They said they wanted anyone with British and American passports and then they took us up the stairs. I think they wanted to take us to the roof," he said, adding that he and another hostage managed to escape on the 18th floor.
A group calling itself the Deccan Mujahedeen claimed responsibility for the assaults on the landmark Taj Mahal and Trident hotels in the south of the city and a number of shooting and bombing incidents elsewhere.
- AAP, agencies