http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JL02Df05.html

Indian officials have said most, perhaps all, of the 10 Islamist attackers who held Mumbai hostage with frenzied attacks using assault rifles and grenades came from Pakistan, a Muslim nation carved out of Hindu-majority India in 1947.

“We have evidence that the terrorists came from Pakistan,” M.L. Kumawat, India’s special secretary for internal security, told Reuters. He declined to say what that was.

An official in Islamabad said the next one to two days would be crucial for the nuclear-armed neighbours’ relations. Pakistan has condemned the assaults and denied any involvement by state agencies.

After a final battle between militants and security forces on Saturday inside the Taj Mahal, Mumbai’s best-known hotel, a crowd of protesters outside pumped their fists and shouted: “Our soldiers came and Pakistan ran away”.

A senior Pakistani security official said Islamabad would divert troops to its border with India and away from fighting militants on the Afghan frontier if tensions rose.

“If something happens on that front, the war on terror won’t be our priority,” the official told reporters at a briefing. “We’ll take out everything from the western border. We won’t leave anything there.”

Elite Black Cat commandos killed the last of the gunmen on Saturday after three days of room-to-room battling inside the Taj Mahal, one of several landmarks struck in coordinated attacks on Wednesday night.

Hundreds of people, many of them Westerners, were trapped or taken hostage as the gunmen hurled grenades and fired indiscriminately. At least 22 of those killed were foreigners, including businessmen and tourists.

Nine gunmen and 20 police and soldiers were also killed.

A tenth militant caught alive told interrogators they wanted to be remembered for an Indian version of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Times Now TV said, quoting an unidentified Defence Ministry official.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said “elements” in Pakistan may have been responsible for the attacks.

On Saturday, India’s navy and coast guard boosted coastal patrols, after evidence mounted the attackers had come by boat to Mumbai from Karachi, Pakistan’s main port.

U.S. President George W. Bush said on Saturday he was closely monitoring the Mumbai attacks and had discussed it with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and U.S. diplomats in India.

“We pledge the full support of the United States as India investigates these attacks, brings the guilty to justice and sustains its democratic way of life,” Bush said at the White House.

THREE WARS

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence and went to the brink of a fourth after a December 2001 attack on India’s parliament which India also linked to Pakistan.

They embarked on a peace process in 2004 that has ground on for the past four years.

A high ranking security officer in Pakistan said tension with India was escalating rapidly: “They’ll have clarity of thought and we’ll have clarity of the situation in next 24-48 hours.”

The ruling Congress party said on Saturday it expected Pakistan to adhere to its commitment not to let its territory be used for attacks on India.

“Pakistan can do whatever they want inside their border. We have to be careful and vigilant and I can tell you that India is vigilant on its border,” Kumawat said.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has said he would act swiftly on any evidence of Pakistani involvement.

“These are sensitive moments,” Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told a news conference. “The situation is serious, let us not fool ourselves … when the people in India feel this is 9/11 for India.”

India’s internal politics are integral to the fallout from the attacks too. Singh faces an election by May and renewed accusations from India’s main opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, that Congress is weak on security.

“Brutal terror strikes at will. Weak government. Unwilling and incapable. Fight terror — Vote BJP,” said one election advertisment, written over a blood-red stain on a black background.

The Home Ministry said the official toll in Mumbai was 183 killed. Earlier, Mumbai disaster authorities said at least 195 people had been killed and 295 wounded.

The attacks struck at the heart of Mumbai, the engine of an economic boom that has made India a favourite emerging market.

The city of 18 million is also home to the “Bollywood” film industry, the epitome of glamour in a country blighted by poverty.

sent on a suicide mission and that they would be coming back alive.

In a sensational disclosure made by Ajmal, the jihadi nabbed alive by Mumbai cops, the group had planned to sail out on Thursday. Their recruiters had even charted out the return route for them and stored it on the GPS device which they had used to navigate their way to the Mumbai shoreline.

This suggests that the terrorists were willing to undertake a mission which they knew would be very risky, but not necessarily suicidal.

Sources said that the bait of safe return must have been used by the recruiters to convince the wavering among the group to join the audacious plot against Mumbai.

Ajmal made another important disclosure: that all terrorists were trained in marine warfare along with the special course Daura-e-Shifa conducted by the Lashkar-e-Taiba in what at once transforms the nature of the planning from a routine terror strike and into a specialized raid by commandos.

Battle-hardened ATS officials are surprised by the details of the training the terrorists were put through before being despatched for the macabre mission. This was very different from a terrorist attack, and amounted to an offensive from the seam, said a source.

Ajmal has revealed the name of his fellow jihadis all Pakistani citizens as Abu Ali, Fahad, Omar, Shoaib, Umer, Abu Akasha, Ismail, Abdul Rahman (Bara) and Abdul Rahman (Chhota).

The account of Ajmal also strengthens the doubt of the complicity of powerful elements in the Pakistani establishment. According to him, the group set off on November 21 from an isolated creek near Karachi without the deadly cargo of arms and ammunition they were to use against the innocents in Mumbai. The group received arms and ammunition on board a large Pakistani vessel which picked them up the following day. The vessel, whose ownership is now the subject of an international probe, had four Pakistanis apart from the crew.

A day later, they came across an Indian-owned trawler, Kuber, which was promptly commandeered on the seas. Four of the fishermen who were on the trawler were killed, but its skipper, or tandel in fishermen lingo, Amarjit Singh, was forced to proceed towards India. Amarjit was killed the next day, and Ismail the terrorist who was killed at Girgaum Chowpaty took the wheel.

A trained sailor, Ismail used the GPS to reach Mumbai coast on November 26. The group, however, slowed down its advance as they had reached during the day time while the landing was planned after dusk. The group shifted to inflatable boats, before disembarking at Badhwar Park in Cuffe Parade.

From there, they mandated to kill indiscriminately, particularly white foreign tourists, and spare Muslims split up into five batches. Two of them Ismail and Ajmal took a taxi to Victoria Terminus. Three other batches of two each headed for Oberoi Hotel, Cafe Leopold and Nariman House. The remaining four went to Taj Hotel.

He may have been motivated enough to kill innocents indiscriminately. In police custody, Ajmal Amir Kasab, the terrorist who was caught alive by

the Mumbai police at Girgaum Chowpatty, has been forthcoming with details about the attack on Mumbai and his accomplices, all suspected Lashkar operatives from Pakistan.

Kasab, who sustained minor injuries in the police firing that killed his partner Abu Ismail (25) on Wednesday night, was produced before the Esplanade Metropolitan Magistrate on Friday. The magistrate remanded him to police custody till December 8. Incidentally, Kasab and Ismail were the two who gunned down ATS chief Hemant Karkare, additional CP Ashok Kamthe and encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar.

Kasab told the police that he and 9 others got off a vessel about 10 nautical miles from Mumbai and shifted to two boats hijacked from fishermen.

One source in ATS familiar with the details of the interrogation quoted him saying that in all 16 fidayeens came to Mumbai on Wednesday. A native of Faridkot in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), 21-year-old Kasab told police they had done a reccee of Mumbai few months ago. He said he had come along with eight of the operatives to Mumbai as students and lived in a rented room at Colaba market, a stone’s throw away from Nariman House.

All the signs, officials say, point to a well-planned action carried out by a highly trained, determined group.

The men appeared to have surveyed their targets in advance and were well-versed in the use of weapons and explosives, a Indian commando said.

Their intention, he said, was “to create and spread terror”.

Investigators believe that a large group of men arrived in Mumbai from the sea around 2100 local time.

They believe that a larger ship – possibly a hijacked vessel, possibly an accomplice ship – brought them close to the shore before they switched to smaller dinghies.

Once ashore, they split into two-, three- and four-man groups to attack pre-selected targets.

Several of the attackers were caught on CCTV. Footage showed mainly young men, carrying automatic weapons and large rucksacks.

Officials said the rucksacks contained grenades, extra ammunition, plastic explosives and food supplies.

Multiple attacks

Reports suggest the attacks happened within minutes of each other.

By using such weapons and explosives, it is obvious that they would have been trained somewhere Unidentified commando in Mumbai

One of the first targets was the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station, where at least two men fired automatic weapons and threw grenades at crowds of people waiting in the main hall.

A second group opened fire at Café Leopold, a popular restaurant, while a third seized Nariman House, a business complex housing a Jewish outreach centre, taking several people hostage.

A fourth group – or, some reports say, the same one that attacked the station nearby – struck the Cama and Albless hospital for women and children. A number of drive-by shootings were also reported across the city.

By around 2200 local time gun fire was being reported at two of the city’s luxury hotels – the Oberoi-Trident and the Taj Mahal Palace.

Hundreds of troops have been deployed to sites around Mumbai

Some guests managed to escape what they described as indiscriminate fire, while others sheltered in their rooms. Others were shot – exactly how many remains unclear.

The gunmen were looking for Americans and Britons, guests trapped at the hotels said, and hostages were taken in both locations.

Gunfire and small blasts continued to be heard at both hotels over the next several hours, as Indian troops surrounded the buildings. Fires broke out in both hotels.

‘Trained somewhere’

In the early hours of Thursday, commando teams entered both hotels to try to find the gunmen.

Attackers at the Taj Mahal appeared familiar with the layout and moved continually around the building, firing their weapons. They definitely appeared to have been trained, the commando said.

“Not everybody can fire the AK series of weapons, not everybody can throw grenades like that,” he said. “By using such weapons and explosives, it is obvious that they would have been trained somewhere.”

The commandos went through the hotels floor by floor and room by room to flush out the attackers and free trapped guests and staff.

Reports that particular locations had been made safe were several times followed by fresh bursts of gunfire and explosions, and the crisis entered a third day.

By Friday afternoon (local time), Indian security forces said that they had control of the Oberoi. Multiple bodies had been found, they said.

Later that night, troops regained control of Nariman House. The bodies of five hostages were found inside.

In the early hours of Saturday, soldiers launched a renewed assault on the Taj Mahal Palace hotel. By mid-morning, they said that three gunmen were dead and they believed the siege was over – although room-to-room checks were necessary to confirm this.