Diners hear shots, hide for hours

MUMBAI, India — They showed up, as they do every night: businessmen for meetings in the elegant restaurant that overlooks the harbor, politicians for cocktails in a bar with velvet seats and wood and marble floors, friends for a steak dinner by the pool.

But then the shooting started.

Explosions followed in and around the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower — a Mumbai landmark with sweeping staircases, onyx columns and high alabaster ceilings, known at the playground of the city's elite since it opened in 1903.

Dalbir Bains, who runs a lingerie shop in Mumbai, had just sat down for dinner by the pool when she heard the first shots. She ran upstairs and huddled under a table in the Sea Lounge restaurant. She, and about 50 others who were with her, tried to remain as quiet as possible.

"The gunshots were following us," said Bains.

It wasn't until 4 a.m., more than six hours after the first shots rang out, that authorities began escorting people out of the hotel. That's when Bains climbed down a fire ladder to safety.

A handful of people sneaked out earlier, including a group guided by security personnel who happened to be dining at the hotel. They shuffled five at a time down more than 20 flights of stairs. Many took their shoes off to minimize the noise.

The spiraling stairway was narrow and steep, and it was so hot they had to stop three times on the half-hour journey, said Manrico Iachia, the Italian executive vice president of Europ Assistance, an insurance firm.

Two men carried a woman in a wheelchair down, he said.

Witnesses said about 200 people — hotel staff, diners at the Souk restaurant and people attending an India-Korea business conference — hid together for five hours in a conference room at the top of the adjacent Taj Tower.