THEY came from the four corners of the globe. From places as diverse as Bavaria and Brooklyn, Singapore and New South Wales. Asians and Westerners, Hindus, Christians, Jews and Muslims. Fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, business tycoons and religious emissaries.

Around 200 people, including 22 foreigners, were killed in the attacks on 10 sites across India's financial capital that began on Wednesday night. Another 295 were wounded, and the death toll was expected to rise as bodies were collected from the Taj Mahal and Trident-Oberoi hotels. The lives of the victims might have been as diverse as the places they came from, but they met their common fate in a hail of gunfire and explosions. As is often the case in the wake of terrorist attacks, the foreigners and Western victims drew the most attention, while the names and details of many ordinary Indians never made the headlines.

People like 35-year-old Shiv Shankar Gupta, a hawker at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, who was gunned down and later died of his wounds in the badly equipped GT (Gokuladas Tejpal) government-run hospital.

"My brother could have been saved if he had been treated on time," said Narayan Gupta. "We are illiterate people and don't know what they have done. But he is gone, leaving his wife and family in a terrible situation."

Like many ordinary Indians, Narayan is angry and believes some casualties would have survived if the government hospitals had not been so dilapidated and badly equipped.

Bhagan Shinde, himself a worker at GT Hospital, was wounded in the back when he was shot near his home.

"He was shot on the road and managed to come home. We took him immediately to the hospital and admitted him to the ICU. We were not informed about his condition and then doctors declared him dead the next day. Perhaps better treatment could have saved him," insisted Shinde's nephew, Shyam Jadhav.

Indian victims came from all walks of life. Among them was Sabina Sehgal Saikia a senior journalist of The Times of India who was found dead in the Taj Hotel when Indian commandos cleared the building of terrorists. A resident food critic with the paper, she was in Mumbai for a wedding reception but returned to her hotel room early because she was tired, and became trapped .

The city mourned its dead even as security forces battled to end the siege. Hundreds of mourners gathered in a courtyard near the home of Shashank Shinde, a senior police inspector killed by gunmen at the railway station in the opening hours of the attacks. His mother, wife and one of his two daughters were crying as they placed wreaths of marigolds on his body, wrapped in white sheets and covered with an Indian flag.

From around the world cameos of the victims' lives and last hours have begun to appear. Lives like those of a father and daughter from a Virginia meditation group who were among five Americans confirmed dead. Kia Scherr told CNN her husband, Alan, 58, and daughter, Naomi, 13, were dining at the Oberoi when the gunfire broke out. They had been in India since November 17, and had been were due to leave tomorrow.

Other victims at the Oberoi included Japanese businessman and father-of-two Hisashi Tsuda, who was shot as he was checking in on Wednesday night, and Australian Brett Gilbert Taylor, 49, who was with colleagues from a New South Wales trade delegation.

Loumia Hiridjee, the founder of a French clothing company, and her husband, Mourad Amarsay, also died on the first night, while one of two Canadians killed was septuagenarian doctor Michael Moss, who was just days away from returning home after a four-week holiday in India.

Across this devastated city and in distant outposts around the world, family members have been coming to terms with the violent deaths of their loved ones and the grief that is now setting in. On Friday night the husband of Singaporean hostage Lo Hoei Yen arrived at a city morgue to identify his wife. In the hours and days ahead there will no doubt be many more survivors faced with such an awful duty.