As heavily armed militants rampaged through Mumbai, bloggers, citizen journalists and users of Twitter, the short-messaging service, provided riveting, if sometimes erroneous, accounts of the bloodshed in India's largest city.

Arun Shanbhag, a 46-year-old American of Indian origin who lives in Boston, where he teaches at Harvard Medical School, was visiting his parents in Mumbai when the squads of gunmen stormed luxury hotels and other city landmarks.

Shanbhag wrote on his blog that he slept through the attacks on the Wednesday night, but he has since provided a gripping and emotional eye-witness view of the events around the Taj Mahal Hotel.

He has maintained a running blog on his website, supplemented it with messages on Twitter at twitter.com/arunshanbhag and even uploaded pictures to photo-sharing site Flickr at flickr.com/photos/shanbhag.

Shanbhag's first message on micro-blogging service Twitter was: "Mumbai Blasts: Taj Hotel is a block from my house! Hostages still inside; still burning; smoke is pouring from windows; pics later."

That was followed by "Front of our building is staging area for Fire Engines" and "Parents are trying to keep me inside the house."

Shanbhag did eventually manage to leave, posting pictures on Flickr of the Taj Hotel in flames and the carnage left outside the Cafe Leopold.

"NOW I am MAD! Seeing the Dome of the Taj light up like a bon-fire! I AM MAD! MAD! MAD!" Shanbhag wrote in one Twitter message.

"NOW I am overwhelmed! Finally tears, in torrents! I am very, very sad!" he added in another.

A game of telephone

While Shangbhag provided a sober and personal account of the events, some of the thousands of messages being exchanged every few seconds by some of the six million users of Twitter reflected the chaos and uncertainty of the situation.

Like in the game of telephone, a seven-member South African security squad which helped rescue 120 guests from the Taj Hotel was transformed by some Twitter users into a 120-member team of elite South African commandos.

Twitter users swapped real-time messages at a breakneck pace as the events unfolded, whether it was seeking information on family or friends or exchanging links to the latest breaking news stories.

There were even unconfirmed reports that the Indian authorities had tried to stop people posting to Twitter because of fears the information could somehow be used by the militants still holding hostages.

Photos, videos and maps

On Flickr, the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site, photographer Vinukumar Ranganathan posted dozens of images at flickr.com/photos/vinu.

Dozens of videos also appeared on video-sharing site YouTube although the vast majority were recordings of television reports about the attacks rather than actual user-generated videos by eye-witnesses.

Citizen journalists sent videos, photos and personal accounts to sites such as nowpublic.com/tag/Mumbai and groundreport.com and numerous websites cropped up within hours of the attacks offering helpful information.

A Google Map created by a user identified only as Jonathan pinpointing the exact locations of the attacks has been viewed more than 40 000 times and can be found at tinyurl.com/6gwser.

Mumbaihelp.blogspot.com, published lists of released hostages, helpline numbers and served as a message board for people trying to get in touch with friends and family.

"Blood Donors are needed at the Government Hospitals that are treating the hundreds of injured," a blogger named arZan wrote on another site, mumbai.metblogs.com, adding the telephone numbers for three hospitals.

On Facebook and other social networks, groups were created to pay homage to the victims including one set up "In memory of all those who died in the 26th-27th November MUMBAI massacre" which has already attracted 22 000 members.

History was also being written online.

Forty-eight hours after the first shots were fired, the English version of online encyclopedia Wikipedia already had a 4000-word-and-growing entry on the attacks at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2008_Mumbai_attacks.

AFP