INDIA LAST night blamed militant groups based in Pakistan for the bloody attack on Mumbai, as commandos battled room to room to evict the last remaining terrorists from two hotels in the city.
Police said 119 people had been killed and 315 wounded after a group of 20 to 25 gunmen armed with automatic rifles and grenades and carrying backpacks full of ammunition fanned out across Mumbai on Wednesday to attack sites popular with tourists and businessmen.
Police said they had shot seven gunmen and arrested nine suspects. They said 12 policemen have been killed.
Flames billowed from an upper floor of the Trident-Oberoi hotel where 20 to 30 people were thought to have been taken hostage and more than 100 others were trapped in their rooms. Earlier, explosions rattled the nearby Taj Mahal hotel as troops flushed out the last of the militants there. At least 10 Israeli nationals were also trapped in buildings or held hostage, an Israeli embassy official in New Delhi said.
Many eyewitnesses relived the nightmare in which gunmen fired indiscriminately at 10 crowded locations, such as the popular Leopold cafe patronised by westerners, the two hotels in the heart of the business district, and Mumbai's busy Victoria Terminus station.
Dipak Dutta told NDTV news after being rescued from the Taj Mahal hotel that he had been told by troops escorting him through the corridors not to look down at any of the bodies. "A lot of chef trainees were massacred in the kitchen," he said. At least six foreigners, including one Australian, a Briton, an Italian and a Japanese national, were killed.
"I heard continuous machine-gun fire for 15 to 20 minutes and when it stopped and I rushed out to help, I saw nothing but rivers of blood," dentist Akash Akhinwar said of the massacre at the Leopold, where shooting started at about 9pm local time.
Aditya Anand said two gunmen hijacked a police vehicle and began deliberately firing at passersby.
"A man next to me tried to hide and was shot in the head. He never got up," he said.
Security sources said the gunmen had executed their mission with military precision. They split up into well co-ordinated teams, moving swiftly through crowded streets giving no opportunity to the security forces to effectively engage them in a firefight at any point.
Prime minister Manmohan Singh declared that those who launched the gunmen on Mumbai were based "outside the country", and he warned "neighbours" who provide a haven for anti-India militants against pursuing such a cynical strategy.
The use of heavily armed fedayeen or suicide attackers bears the hallmarks of Pakistan-based militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed, blamed for a 2001 attack on India's parliament.
Lashkar-e-Taiba denied any role in the attacks, and said it had no links with any Indian group. Instead, the little-known Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility. - ( Additional reporting Reuters)