Hostages were killed before NSG operation

Hostages were killed before NSG operation
Press Trust of India
Sunday, November 30, 2008 5:49 PM (New Delhi)

The terrorists who kept several guests as hostages in Taj Mahal and Trident-Oberoi hotel did not make "any demand" and they carried out all the killings before the NSG could start its operations, the chief of the elite commando unit said on Sunday."We did not receive any demand from any of the terrorists," Director General of the NSG, J K Dutt, said in New Delhi on Sunday and suggested that the intention of the rampaging terrorists was not to keep anyone alive.All the "senseless killings" in the Taj and Oberoi-Trident hotels had been carried out before commando units stormed the buildings, he said, a day after NSG commandos ended the siege at the Taj hotel.Dutt said the holdout militants had a comprehensive knowledge of the Taj's terrain, as they were able to move from one place to another "without a misstep."Whenever the special forces units launched an offensive, the gunmen would set fire to a hotel room to create a diversion, before moving on to a new hiding place."For these reasons it was very difficult to dislodge them," he said.Dutt also refuted charges that the terrorists had planned to blow up the 105-year-old Taj heritage hotel ina repeat of theMarriott hotel attack in Islamabad which claimed around 60 lives and left more than 250 people injured."Terrorists did not appear to have plans to blow up the Taj heritage hotel as they lacked enough explosives," Dutt said in New Delhi on his return after the NSG mission operations in the financial capital of the country.The elite force lost its two commandos - Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan and Havildar Gajendra Singh - while eight others were injured during its counter-offensive against terrorists in two of the three locations that witnessed the worst-ever terrorist siege in the country.