Vilasrao Deshmukh visits Taj hotel
30 Nov 2008, 1818 Hrs

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Mumbai, Nov 30 Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh visited Taj Mahal hotel, one of the attack sites in Mumbai on Sunday.

The police officials accompanied Deshmukh to take stock of the situation there.

Addressing the media after emerging from the hotel, Deshmukh said, now with rescue work over, the investigations will pick up speed.

"All the rescue work was finished on Saturday and now the officials are busy in the investigations. From today onwards the investigation will be carried on speedily and then only all the details will come out," said Deshmukh.

Maharashtra Government has announced to give Rs. 25 lakh to the families of the victims killed in the terror attack.

India has blamed the strikes on 'elements' from nuclear rival Pakistan and said that evidence was mounting that terrorists may have hatched their plan there.

The public anger began to rise over the attacks after elite Black Cat commandos killed four militants in a running gun battle through a maze of corridors, rooms and halls in Mumbai's best-known hotel.

They were the last of 10 gunmen who attacked Mumbai's top two luxury hotels, its biggest railway station and several other landmarks with grenades and assault rifles in a rampage that began on Wednesday night.

Mumbai Police Commissioner Hassan Gafur said, the information that the militants had gathered of the sites of the attack, was all from the photographs and maps that they had sourced from the internet.

"The local knowledge that the militants had was only through maps and photographs," said Gafur.

Mumbai authorities said at least 195 people had been killed and 295 wounded.

The death toll has been rising even as bodies were collected from the Trident-Oberoi hotel and the Taj Mahal Hotel -- scene of another siege that ended on Friday.

The attacks struck at the heart of Mumbai, the engine room of an economic boom that has made India a favourite emerging market.

It is also home to the 'Bollywood' film industry, the epitome of glamour in a country blighted by poverty. (ANI)