Socked and angry! Over ten hours ago terrorists attacked Mumbai, the commercial capital of India, killing at least 80 civilians, police officers and many people including US citizens are being taken hostage. Mumbai is at war!

Interestingly, the first news came to the world was not from CNN or from any other news agency but from Twitter’s magical 140-character text messages. TechCrunch, leading tech blog, could capture picture of the first news updated on Twitter here.

“Forget CNN, which so far has few details of the ongoing attacks in Mumbai, India that have left at least 80 dead. People are giving first hand reports of what they’re seeing directly on Twitter,” wrote Mike Arrington.

Now messages prefixed with #mumbai are flooding Twitter to report all horrible things happening lively at the site. It is observed that there were hundreds of updates per minute about the incident at peak time. Apart from news, many of them are guides, emergency numbers for those who are seeking helps.

The local authority advised TV channels to stop broadcasting sensitive information which may help terrorists tracking army’s movements. It is much less likely that the terrorists are now using Twitter to find way to escape.

Keep twittering and we will be closer to people in the tragedy than ever before.