Indian Navy's elite Marine Commandos (MARCOS) have recovered a Mauritian national's identity card from the rug sack of a terrorist, who escaped from the Taj hotel room, after an encounter with the security forces."We have recovered a rug sack of a terrorist, who escaped, after an encounter with the MARCOS and we found an identity card of a Mauritian national," Marine Commandos team leader, who was part of the operation, told reporters on Friday.The rug sack also contained Chinese made grenades, seven ammunition magazines, 400 spare rounds of ammunition, seven credit cards of different banks, dry rations and USD 1,200 and Rs 6,840 from inside the rug sack.The recovered items were later handed over to the Mumbai police, the team leader said.Indicating that the terrorists had done a recce of the targeted landmarks before their attack, the MARCOS leader said it was because of their knowledge of the building that the terrorists could escape from the hotel room after the encounter.He said they had noticed only three to four terrorists, who were probably operating from different floors, as they were very well versed with the outlay of the Taj hotel, where they were holed up for most part of the 40-hour operation."Terrorists were hurling grenades and firing from different floors and we could not see them because of the darkness. But they were operating with ease," he said. Describing the physique of terrorists, the MARCOS leader said they were not of a "big built" and were below thirty years of age."They were wearing T-shirts and looked to be below 30 years and were of normal built," he said.The MARCOS leader said the team had to face a problem in dealing with the terrorists inside the hotel as they did not know much about the building and had to take the help of the hotel staff to operate there."We had to find our way out as we did not know the layout of Taj. The hotel staff helped us to find our way inside there," he said, indicating that the security forces were ill-equipped before an operation of this magnitude was launched.The team could not even get access to the CCTV monitoring room that could have helped it in finding the exact location of the terrorists."When we tried to enter the CCTV room, it was full of smoke and entering it was not possible and terrorists were also continuing with their fire," the team leader said.The MARCOS leader said terrorists were taking advantage of the darkness inside the hotel and continued firing whereas they had to move ahead with caution to avoid civilian casualties inside there."They were firing all over and people were getting killed. We were also firing back at them but we had to be careful as civilian casualties are to be avoided," he added.Giving an estimate of the number of hostages, injured and dead inside the hotel at the time when MARCOS moved in, the team leader said: "We think there were over 200 hostages inside the hotel at that time. We found five to six injured people also there, who were later evacuated and there were around 50-odd people lying dead over there."
