Running barefoot over blood on floor saved her

Madrid: Esperanza Aguirre, a prominent Spanish politician, returned home from Mumbai, India, on Thursday only hours after landing in the Indian city. She had escaped death by running barefoot through blood.

Aguirre, president of the regional government of Madrid, checked in to Mumbai's Oberoi Hotel on Wednesday with a delegation of Spanish business executives. She struck up a conversation in the lobby with a childhood friend who was visiting separately. Then the shooting started.

"Only when it turned into a machine-gun volley, clearly a sustained shootout, did I realise what was happening," Aguirre said during a news conference here on Thursday. "We threw ourselves behind the reception desk."

The hotel staff "put us first in the kitchen, then the storerooms of the kitchen, then the laundry, then they took us the offices of the manager," she said.

As the guests fled, Aguirre lost a shoe. She removed the other and ran barefoot. The delegation piled into cars and zoomed back to the airport, only to encounter a traffic jam caused by an explosion. After making their way to the international terminal, they flew back to Madrid.

"I did not see the terrorists or wounded people," she said. "I didn't even know they were terrorists. I only saw the blood that I had to cross barefoot. I stepped in quite a few puddles of blood."

The gunmen who stormed several targets, including several luxury hotels and a Jewish centre, were apparently hunting for foreigners.

They singled out Americans, Britons and Jews to take hostage.

The cross-section of prominent foreigners reflected Mumbai's reputation as a thriving centre of international business. In addition to the Madrid delegation, a group of legislators from the European Parliament were among those pinned down by the siege. Several legislators gave interviews to media back in Europe during their ordeals, providing real-time snapshots of the drama.

A fatality, Ralph Burkei of Germany, tried to escape from the Taj Mahal but fell onto a lower roof. The gravely injured Burkei, 51, a media entrepreneur from Munich, managed to call a friend in Germany, according to German media reports. Burkei told the friend all his bones had been broken and that he did not think he would make it if he did not get help.

In addition to monitoring a standoff at Chabad House, the Jewish centre where hostages reportedly were being held, Israeli officials sought to establish the whereabouts of 20 missing Israelis, according to that country's Foreign Ministry.