Mumbai, India's financial capital and the heart of Bollywood, the world's largest film industry by number of annual productions, was reeling Thursday from 16 coordinated terrorist attacks that killed 101 people and wounded 287 overnight.
Business was at a standstill by midday Thursday with many citizens in the city of 19 million choosing to stay home as a standoff between Indian army troops and terrorists continued at the five-star Taj Mahal Palace Hotel -- an institution that is to Bollywood what the Carlton is to Cannes or The Beverly Hills Hotel was to Hollywood of a bygone era.
The Taj was aflame most of Wednesday night after young gunmen stormed the place shooting guests and demanding the identity of U.S., U.K. and other Western passport holders.
Six foreign nationals are reported among the dead.
Australian TV star Brooke Satchwell, who is in Mumbai on a three-week shoot, was in a production meeting inside the Taj on Wednesday evening when gunmen stormed the hotel firing automatic weapons.
"We felt a little bit like sitting ducks," Satchwell told radio 3AW of Australia, adding that she and others hid in a hotel toilet stall until they were ushered past dead bodies in the lobby by hotel security and into the street, where chaos reigned.
Satchwell said she maintained contact with her colleagues trapped inside the hotel via mobile phone short text message.
The identities of dozens of guests unaccounted for in the Taj and another five-star hotel attacked, the Oberoi Trident, could include members of the global media and entertainment industries who over the years have frequented both establishments when paying visits to Bollywood to do business.
Fourteen of the 16 terror targets hit Wednesday night, including a movie theater, were downtown, in the southern half of Mumbai, far from most of the Bollywood movie studios in the northern half of the port city on India's West coast.
Cinemas were closed Thursday, including the seven owned by the country's largest cinema chain, Big Cinemas, whose COO, Tushar Dhingra, told The Hollywood Reporter that it was too early to say how the shutdown would affect Friday's scheduled releases and that most people were simply concerned for their safety.
"Max Payne" from 20th Century Fox and independent Indian film "The President is Coming," by producer Rohan Sippy, were among the films due to release Friday.
"There will be a negative impact at least for this weekend," said Rajeev Mansand, film critic and entertainment editor at U.S.-Indian joint venture broadcaster CNN-IBN.
Sippy said, "As of today we're just concerned about the overall security situation," declining to say if he would postpone his film's release.
A spokesperson for Sony Pictures Entertainment said the studio would continue to monitor events and that as of midday, there were no known injuries to SPE employees or damage to SPE facilities.
The attacks cast a shadow on a major new cricket tournament scheduled to start across India on Dec. 3 and due to be broadcast by ESPN Star Sports, which last week announced a 10-year contract for worldwide broadcast rights.
Three Australian cricket teams canceled travel to Mumbai, ruling out their participation in the Twenty20 Champions League International tournament.
Sharma Paras, ESPN Star's senior director of communications, said it was too early to be thinking about the tournament.
"We are shocked by the attacks and mourn the sad loss of lives in the Mumbai incidents overnight. We share in the worldwide concern about the safety of people still under threat," Paras said from Singapore, adding that ESPN Star Sports and tournament organizers would be monitoring the situation.
The attacks, which also targeted hospitals, the main Mumbai railway station and the popular tourist restaurant Cafe Leopold, occurred on day four of the 39th International Film Festival of India, the country's most prestigious annual cinema event. Organizers of the festival -- held in Panaji, 593 km (369 mi) south of Mumbai -- could not be reached for comment.
The terror attacks come just weeks after Mumbai-based industrialist Anil Ambani spent $550 million to back Steven Spielberg in the formation of a new movie studio in close partnership with his company Reliance Big Entertainment.
Gunjan Bagla, a Los Angeles-based economist who advises The Walt Disney Co. in its work in India, said the attacks would further bind India and the United States together.
"We are the world's largest democracies and the world's largest entertainment industries. The horrible attacks in Mumbai underscore the fact that dastardly opponents of freedom, peace and multiculturalism hate both countries in the same manner," Bagla told The Hollywood Reporter.
The terrorist attacks were spread throughout the city's business district, with horrifying images of dead and wounded in the streets, the local train station and other sites hitting world media outlets.
Images of the burning Taj hotel, flames leaping and plumes of smoke filling the air, were being broadcast hour after hour on the world's 24-hour news channels as the city went into a state of lockdown.
By midday in India Thursday, authorities had not released the names of the dead and wounded.
An organization calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen claimed it was behind the attacks, television channels said. The previously little-known group sent an e-mail to news organizations claiming responsibility.
"I guess they were after foreigners, because they were asking for British or American passports," said Rakesh Patel, a British witness who lives in Hong Kong and was staying at the Taj on business. "They had bombs."
"They came from the restaurant and took us up the stairs," he told the NDTV news channel, soot staining his face. "Young boys, maybe 20 years old, 25 years old. They had two guns."
India has suffered a wave of bomb attacks in recent years. Most have been blamed on Islamist militants, although police have also arrested suspected Hindu extremists thought to be behind some of the attacks.
Hemant Karkare, the chief of the police anti-terrorist squad in Mumbai, was killed during the latest attacks, police said.
In Washington, the White House and President Elect Barack Obama condemned the attacks.
A European official was among the wounded.
"My hotel is surrounded by police and there are gunmen inside," European lawmaker Ignasi Guardans told Spanish radio from the Taj. "We are in contact with some deputies inside the hotel, with one in a room and another hidden in the kitchen. There's another official hurt and in hospital."
Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil said there were around four or five attackers in each of the two hotels hit.
"They have attacked hotels, they have attacked the hospitals, they have attacked the railway station," he said, adding that two attackers had been killed and two arrested.
Comments