MUMBAI, India — The standoffs in the Indian commercial capital of Mumbai narrowed to a final running battle between commandos and at least one gunman who was still roaming the charred corridors of a luxury hotel, the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, but the murderous assault on this city continued to shake the nation and ratchet up tensions with neighboring Pakistan.
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Police watched the Taj Mahal Hotel, set ablaze by terrorists, in Mumbai on Thursday. More Photos »
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All told, police said, more than 150 people, including at least 22 foreigners, were killed in attacks across the city, including a rabbi from Brooklyn and his wife, who had moved to Mumbai to operate a Jewish center. Nine gunmen were slain, the police said, and one was captured alive.
American intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Friday there was mounting evidence that a Pakistani militant group — one long involved in the conflict with India over in the disputed territory of Kashmir — was responsible for the deadly attacks on Mumbai.
After two days of fighting, Indian security forces killed the attackers in one luxury hotel in the city known as the Oberoi Trident, freeing civilians trapped inside. Other units killed the gunmen occupying the headquarters of the Jewish center.
The slain rabbi, Gavriel Holtzberg, who held dual American and Israeli citizenship, and his wife, Rivka, an Israeli citizen, were among at least five hostages who were killed by attackers at the Jewish center, Nariman House. Another was Rabbi Leibish Teitelbaum, a Brooklyn native who moved to Jerusalem several years ago, according to a statement by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Israeli radio reported that a sixth body had been found at the center as well.
Also among the dead were two Americans, a 58-year-old man and his 13-year-old daughter, members of a spiritual community visiting from Virginia, who died in the Oberoi hotel. Two more Americans and two Canadians, traveling as part of the same retreat, were injured.
Two French nationals, the founder of a French lingerie line and her husband, were also among those killed in the violence in the city, according to Agence France-Presse.
Shortly before night settled over Mumbai, the police said 30 bodies were discovered in the Oberoi hotel, where the police had finally taken control and many guests and employees were evacuated earlier on Friday. The national security guard said it found two AK-47’s, a 9 millimeter pistol and some grenades inside the hotel; two gunmen were killed inside.
But the army’s operation at the second luxury hotel, the Taj, was only entering its “final phase,” according to the Indian military, with commandos battling at least one terrorist inside who was moving between two floors of the hotel, including an area that had been a dance floor for weddings and other parties. The army said two other gunmen had been killed overnight in the Taj. Later, commandos were seen rushing through the front door of the hotel, in what appeared to be another major assault to dislodge the militants.
Loud explosions and gun battles raged inside the Taj for most of the afternoon and evening. Indian commandos said the attackers at the hotels were well-trained and remorseless, with one attacker carrying a backpack packed with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and they seemed to know the buildings’ layout better than the security forces, indicating a high degree of preparation and sophistication.
The leader of a commando unit involved in a gun battle Thursday morning inside the Taj said during a news conference on Friday that he had seen a dozen dead bodies in one of the rooms.
His team also discovered a gunman’s backpack, which contained dried fruit, 400 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, four grenades, Indian and American money, and seven credit cards from some of the world’s leading banks. They pack also had a national identity card from the island of Mauritius, off Africa’s southeastern coast.
The attackers were “very, very familiar with the layout of the hotel,” said the commander, who disguised his face with a scarf and tinted glasses. He said the militants, who appeared to be under 30 years old, were “determined” and “remorseless.”
The Indian media focused on the possible involvement of the Pakistani guerrilla group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has been linked to Pakistani intelligence.
As the State Department reported that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had called President-elect Obama twice to brief him on the attacks, American intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Friday there was mounting evidence pointing to the involvement of Lashkar, or possibly another Pakistani group focused on Kashmir, Jaish-e-Muhammad.
The American officials cautioned that they had reached no hard conclusions about who was responsible, or how it was planned and carried out. An F.B.I. team has been sent to Mumbai to assist with the forensic investigation of the attacks.
In a statement, President Bush said he was saddened by the American deaths.
Amid an atmosphere of recrimination between political parties within India, a senior Hindu nationalist leader, L.K. Advani, said the Indian security services had become “preoccupied” with Hindu terrorists and missed threats from Islamists. The Indian foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, said early evidence explicitly pointed to Pakistan’s involvement.
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Multimedia
Rescue Efforts in MumbaiSlide Show
Rescue Efforts in Mumbai
Terror Continues in MumbaiSlide Show
Terror Continues in Mumbai
Map and Photographs of the Attack SitesInteractive Map
Map and Photographs of the Attack Sites
Back Story With Keith Bradsher
Related
Counting the Hours in Room 2324 (November 29, 2008)
News Analysis: India’s Suspicion of Pakistan Clouds U.S. Strategy (November 28, 2008)
Brooklyn Rabbi and Wife Caught in Attacks (November 28, 2008)
Times Topics: Terrorism in India
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"Preliminary evidence, prima facie evidence, indicates elements with links to Pakistan are involved," Mr. Mukherjee told reporters in New Delhi.
An Indian official said one assailant had been captured alive and was a Pakistani citizen. The assertion, by R.R. Patil, the home affairs minister of Maharashtra State, where Mumbai is located, could further increase tension between India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed states which have fought wars in the past.
In London, officials said they were unable to confirm reports in a British newspaper that some of the attackers had British passports. Holding British passports is relatively common among people with ties to former colonies, but other officials said such a link was unlikely.
Pockets of resistance remained. In the Oberoi, some guests were still barricaded in their rooms Friday afternoon as security forces reasserted control of the hotel, and they were watching events outside on television news channels. But police and military officers did not explain why the operation to flush out a handful of assailants in the Taj hotel and the Jewish community center had taken so long.
At the Jewish center, commandos slid down ropes from a hovering Army helicopter on Friday morning as they stormed the building. The blue-uniformed troopers landed on the roof and soon made their way inside the center, home to the Hasidic Jewish group Chabad-Lubavitch, and a gun battle raged.
Late in the day, commandos in black uniforms and body armor moved into buildings around the center, Nariman House, relieving commandos in blue or black uniforms who had been in action all day. For the first time, a van with six medics in surgical gowns and masks parked nearby.
The main success of the day for the authorities came at the Oberoi hotel where police said that 93 foreigners — some of them wearing Air France and Lufthansa uniforms — had been rescued on Friday. Exhausted survivors offered harrowing accounts of their ordeal, trapped on the upper floors of the high-rise hotel occupied on lower floors by gunmen.
In a televised speech Thursday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed forces “based outside this country” in a thinly veiled accusation that Pakistan was involved. A day later, India’s foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee was quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying that, according to preliminary reports, “some elements in Pakistan are responsible.”
But Pakistan seemed anxious to defuse the mounting crisis in relations with its neighbor. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said India and Pakistan should join hands to defeat a common enemy, and urged New Delhi not to play politics over the attacks in Mumbai, Reuters reported.
“Do not bring politics into this issue,” the Pakistani foreign minister told reporters in the Indian town of Ajmer during a four-day visit to India. “This is a collective issue. We are facing a common enemy and we should join hands to defeat the enemy.”
President Asif Ali Zardari called Mr. Singh, Reuters reported, to say he was “appalled and shocked” by the terrorist attacks. “Non-state actors wanted to force upon the governments their own agenda, but they must not be allowed to succeed,” he said.
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