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ShareMUMBAI: The terrorists who wreaked havoc in south Mumbai Wednesday night had arrived by a boat and moored it at a fisherman's colony by the beach near Sasson Dock, about one km from the Taj Continental Hotel, eyewitnesses said.
The boat carried 10 terrorists and a very large amount of what looked like heavy cartons, the eyewitnesses added.
The fishermen's version corroborates what Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil said Thursday morning that the terrorists arrived here virtually incognito by the sea route. All the targets are either seafront locations or close to the Arabian Sea.
According to some fishermen who were near the beach at the time, they got suspicious about the movements of the 10 people who had arrived on the boat.
"Since they did not look at all like fishermen, we asked them what they were unloadingon the beach. One of them said bluntly in Hindi to mind our own business and let them do their own," said one of the fishermen.
He also revealed that while eight of them alighted from the boat, two others went away on the boat.
It was soon after that firing at the Leopold cafe in Colaba in the vicinity of the Taj Hotel started. Later in the night, the police also detected 8 kg of RDX dumped near the Bade Mian eating joint on the road behind the hotel.
Two boys, working at the Gateway of India, claim they saw the terrorists behind the most audacious terror strike in the country, loaded with big rucksacks alighting at the jetty and opening fire indiscriminately a few minutes later.
"I saw some men with rucksacks alighting from a boat Wednesday night. I asked them where they wanted to go but they retorted it was none of my business," a 13-year-old boy said.
Another boy, who saw them unloading heavy bags, said: "They were in a great hurry and immediately rushed away from here."
According to intelligence agencies, the terrorists landed at the Gateway of India jetty, across the road from the 565-room Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel, one of the seven places in the city they attacked Wednesday night.
After landing, the assailants commandeered vehicles to attack the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station, the Leopold café and entered the Taj and the Oberoi Trident hotels.
