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'I locked myself in the room and prepared for the worst'
Tim Ross28 Nov 2008
A BRITISH lawyer who survived the Mumbai terror attacks today described his life under siege.
Mark Abell, 51, barricaded himself into his room at the Oberoi hotel, filled the bath with water and prepared for the worst as gunfire and explosions rocked the building.
For most of the two-day siege, his only contact with the outside world was through his mobile phone and BlackBerry.
Now preparing to come home, Mr Abell had been on a work trip with his colleague Christopher Jackson from European law firm Field Fisher Waterhouse.
On the night of the attacks, he was dining in the hotel's Kandahar restaurant. After the meal he stopped to talk with a group of Japanese businessmen in the hotel lobby before returning to his room.
Mr Abell told the Standard the attack began with a violent explosion just seconds later.
"I had just got back to my room and the whole room shook. I thought that the windows were going to smash. Then there was a second explosion, gunfire. Some people tried to escape and it appears that they were shot and killed," he said.
One of the group of Japanese in the lobby was among the dead in the initial blast and the shooting began in the restaurant where he had been dining just minutes earlier.
"Apparently that's where the shooting started. The waitress who was serving us was shot."
Mr Abell stayed in touch with events through the TV before the connection was cut. "You have to try to command your own space so that is what I did.
"I barricaded the room. I filled the bath with water. You couldn't sleep on the bed, we had to use all the furniture to block the door. I was basically sleeping on the floor in the corner of the room. If terrorists came in there would be a blast and we were told to stay away from the door.
"We couldn't use the telephone (in the room) because they would be monitoring the switchboard. I tried to think positively. That way it is fine. If you don't, you go to pieces. Fortunately, I had a BlackBerry. Without that I think it would have been pretty awful."
The device kept Mr Abell in touch with his wife at home in Rickmansworth and other trapped guests.
He received "somewhere in the region of 5,000 emails from people all over the world" offering support. "It gave me great faith in the kindness of human nature at times like this." The mobile email device also allowed guests to set up a network to share information inside the siege. "It was vital," Mr Abell said.
"At times like this, information is a real sustenance that you need for survival. You can go without water for a few days, but in that situation the one thing you cannot go without is information."
Mr Abell said the news of their impending release filtered through with an email suggesting they could be about to be rescued.
"We were corresponding with other people and one of us got an email saying that we were likely to be taken out in the next couple of hours and we should prepare.
"There was a knock at the door, they shouted my name. Then they started shouting 'police' and I looked through the spy hole and there were a large number of commandos, police and hotel staff.
"Very efficiently, they took my luggage, put me in the lift, took me down to the lobby and walked me through the carnage there.
"It was not the sort of thing you really want to talk about. They had obviously tried to clean it up but that sort of thing doesn't clean up very easily." Mr Abell, who has a son, Benjamin aged nine, and 13-year-old daughter Emma, said he was hoping to fly home later today.
"I'm feeling terrific," he said, speaking from the British Consulate. "I'm feeling very good about being out of that hotel."
Mr Abell's wife, Shizuka, said she couldn't wait to have her husband home. "I heard from Mark 15 minutes ago saying he might be coming home today, so I'm overjoyed.
"Wednesday was a very sleepless night. But Mark was really positive. It is very unreal but it happened and it's finished hopefully."
