NORMAL - For Maya Jagasia of Normal, an emergency room doctor, it's difficult to understand why terrorists would attack innocent people in Mumbai.

Her brother lives in the Indian city, near enough to the site of this past week's terrorist attacks to hear gunshots.

She, like others who have relatives living there, was relieved to hear her brother and other relatives were safe.

For her and her husband, Ishwar Jagasia, a radiologist in Normal, the attacks in Mumbai were incomprehensible, especially because she and her husband devote themselves to the pursuit of saving lives.

"I wake up at 2 a.m. to save a 90-year-old woman who had a heart attack. And these 20-year-olds killed those innocent people," said Maya Jagasia, who has lived in Normal for six years and in the United States since 1975.

Terrorists left at least 195 people dead and nearly 300 wounded, including Americans and other foreigners in a shooting spree that started Wednesday and ended Friday, The Associated Press reported.

Maya Jagasia's brother, who lives only a few blocks from one of the Mumbai hotels where many were killed, saw the smoke and heard the gunfire. He e-mailed Maya Jagasia and his brothers in Los Angeles and Australia as soon as he could to let them know he was safe.

His e-mail, which she reread Sunday, started by saying, "We are safe." It included a description of things he had seen and heard. "I feel like crying," it said in closing.

Her brother operates an advertising agency and his wife is a university professor in the city.

Her brother, with whom the Jagasias keep in close contact by phone and e-mails, was never far from their minds when they spent Thanksgiving with their children and granddaughter in Normal, and decorated a Christmas tree Sunday.

Maya has photos of herself standing with her brother with a backdrop of the cityscape that includes the landmark 400-room Taj Mahal hotel which was taken under control by the terrorists, and under siege by Indian commandos.

Just a few months earlier she shopped and had coffee in the area. She plans to return for a visit in January.

"Its devastating knowing that. The Taj was so beautiful, so historic," she said about the attack and the hotel.

A hotel operated by the same owners near her brother's home was evacuated during the crisis.

The Jagasias said there is strong support among Indian families in Bloomington-Normal. Members of the community contact each other to make sure everyone's family is safe.

The Jagasias are members of the McLean County India Association, and Maya Jagasia is president of the Hindu Society of Central Illinois in Bloomington.

The attacks also hit too close for comfort for Dr. Ajay Malpani of Bloomington, who returned to Central Illinois from visiting his homeland only three days before the terrorists - suspected to be Muslim extremists - attacked his childhood city.

He had been near several of the areas targeted only days earlier, and in previous visits had dined in one of the hotels struck.

"It's a matter of chance and luck," he said of being out of the line of fire.

His mother and brother were actually at the train station where several were brutally murdered only 11 hours before the shooting began. They live about 400 miles away but were at the station returning from their trip to see him.

Malpani said he could picture exactly how the terrorists arrived in boats at the Gateway to India and walked past historic landmarks.

"It's very close to home." said Malpani, who grew up and attended medical school in Mumbai, previously known as Bombay.

However, his country and city are not strangers to terrorist acts. Close to 200 people were killed in Mumbai in 2006 as result of a train blast, he said.

"In the U.S. many people don't know how much India is affected by terrorist activity," he said.

It's very difficult to have the security to prevent this kind of tragedy, he said, adding that the attack was very well planned.

Still, terrorist actions won't deter Malpani from visiting his relatives.

"If you've got to go home - you've got to go home. You don't think about these kinds of things," he said.