Brit actor with Asian appearance recalls Mumbai terror carnage

London, Nov.29 : A British actor with an Asian appearance said that he literally curled himself up like a small ball as terrorists struck the restaurant in which he was dining.

Actor Joey Jeetun, 31, from London said the attack on the Leopold cafe, next to the Taj Mahal hotel, would live forever in his memory. He said that he survived because he was covered in other victims' blood and the gunmen thought he was dead.

"I just curled myself in the smallest ball I could and closed my eyes. After about five minutes it stopped and I opened my eyes. There were dead people next to me who had been shot in the head," Jeetun told The Telegraph.

"I was held in a police cell for 13 hours with a group of Arab looking men. They thought I was a suspect even though I said I was a British tourist," he added.

Jeetun once played the role of July 7 suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer in a Channel 5 documentary 7/7: Attack on London.

Welsh gap year student Jeremy Lewis, 18, said: "Seven people were killed on the spot and I thought 'I'm dead'. I was in the cupboard for about an hour-and-a-half. I felt helpless. I distinctly remember the noise of the gunfire and the flood of bullets hitting bodies.

"There is nothing like it. It all feels like it was a dream. Afterwards, there was blood everywhere," he added.

British chartered surveyor Harnish Patel, 29, said: "I was so lucky. The guy just took one look at me and showered the whole side of the bar. He just let loose. It's unimaginable. Luckily, he didn't keep his finger down because if he did, I'd be gone.

"The guy next to me was completely creamed. His face was completely impaled," he recalled

Forty-eight-year-old British businessman Paul Bean, the managing director of a design company, made a frantic phone call to his wife Linda in Wakefield as he hid under a table. He said that bullets whizzed by his head and the terrorists tried to blow their way in with a grenade.

"I got a strange call from him where all I could hear was whispering, literally for just a few seconds. Then all of a sudden he couldn't speak to me and the phone got cut off. Until we heard from Paul again it was absolutely horrendous," Linda Bean recalled.

Conservative MEP Sajjad Karim said: "I saw a man in front of me with a machine gun wanting to kill me. I saw the people in front of me start to drop dead. It was carnage, absolute panic, shouting and confusion. The terrorist were just shooting indiscriminately, men, women, children, all nationalities, all colours and all creeds."

Andreas Liveras, 73, the only confirmed British citizen to die in the attacks, was locked in a room elsewhere in the Taj Mahal.

The Mumbai terror strikes that have so far claimed over 150 lives and injured over 300.

ANI