The 60 hour ordeal has come to an end  as commandos captured the Taj Mahal Hotel, after an intense gun battle, with three terrorists gunned down, authorities said this morning.


"Three terrorists have been killed but we are still continuing our operations," Director General of NSG, J K Dutt, told reporters outside the hotel.

On whether all the terrorists have been killed and hotel is now free, he said that it could be ascertained after the combing operation is over.

During the night, terrorists holed out in the hotel engaged in a fierce gun battle with security forces as some places in the first and the ground floors of the 565-room building set afire by terrorists amid explosions in the over 100-year-old heritage complex in the Colaba area.

The war on terror in Mumbai was finally wrapped up 60 hours after a band of terrorists struck at various locations on Wednesday night with three gunmen killed this morning at the landmark luxury Taj Hotel, bringing the operation to a close. NSG commandos, who believed that a lone terrorist was holding out since yesterday, launched a final assault in the early hours of this morning and killed three terrorists to secure the old heritage area of the hotel opposite the Gateway of India.

The operation to flush out terrorists from Taj Hotel is over, signalling an end to the 62-hour siege by terrorists three of whom were killed this morning in an assault by the elite commandos of National Security Guards (NSG).

However, the NSG is still sanitising the hotel to check if any remaining terrorist or explosive is still in the 400-room hotel, NSG Director General J K Dutt told reporters.

"The commandos killed three terrorists after intense gun-battle inside the hotel," Dutt said.

An AK-47 rifle was also recovered from them.

"There was lot of shooting. Grenades were lobbed and explosives were used by the terrorists," he said.