Could the Jewish and Israeli hostages at Mumbai's Chabad House have fallen to the bullets of the commandos who were trying to flush out terrorists? It's a possibility that the Israelis are not ruling out as they probe the death of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and five other Jews.

Haim Weingarten, the head of a seven-man team of Israel Police's victim identification unit (ZAKA), which is in Mumbai, told the Jerusalem Post: 'Based on what I saw, although I cannot identify the type of bullets in the bodies of the victims, I don't think the terrorists killed all the hostages, to put it gently.'

According to ZAKA officials, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg was the last of the hostages to die in the two-day standoff. Their initial probe puts the time of the Rabbi's death around the time the commandos stormed the building.

The Jerusalem Post said that the ZAKA team found the bodies of six Jewish hostages at the Chabad House minutes after the raid by Indian commandos ended on Saturday. However, the security forces ordered them out of the building before they could remove the bodies, fearing they would step on grenades scattered throughout the facility.

The security forces allowed them to return only hours later, the Post added.

The team has prepared "identification kits" containing identifying details of each of the missing Israelis obtained from their families and Israel Defense Forces records. These details include fingerprints, dental records and DNA samples.

Israeli experts have been claiming that the Indian commandos, in their haste, had probably risked the lives of the hostages.

'In hostage situations, the first thing the forces are supposed to do is assemble at the scene and begin collecting intelligence. In this case, it appears that the forces showed up at the scene and immediately began exchanging fire with the terrorists instead of first taking control of the area,' a former official in Shin Bet, the Israel Security Agency, was quoted as saying after the as saying by The Times.