India mops up last of Mumbai siege, militants say wanted second 9/11

"Taj is under our control," Mumbai police chief Hasan Gafoor told Reuters, shortly after the building was raked by heavy gunfire as flames leapt from windows.

At least three militants and one trooper were killed after a running gunbattle through a maze of corridors, rooms and halls, the country's commando chief, Jyoti Krishna Dutt, told reporters.

The local disaster control room said at least 195 people had been killed, the death toll rising as bodies were collected from the luxury Taj and nearby Trident-Oberoi hotels, scene of another siege that ended on Friday. At least 295 people wounded, the statement added.

The gunmen had set parts of the hotel ablaze as they played cat and mouse with scores of India's best-trained commandos, known as the Black Cats.

Sniffer dogs were taken into the iconic 105-year-old hotel and ambulances arrived. Some commandos did a final sweep of the rooms, while others boarded buses to pull out, looking exhausted.

Several newspapers said some of the militants had checked into the Taj hotel some days or weeks before the attacks, while the Times of India said they had rented an apartment in the city a few months ago pretending to be students.

On Friday, an army general said the gunmen appeared to be "very, very familiar" with the layout of the hotel, giving them a crucial advantage over his men. They were also well trained.

"At times we found them matching us in combat and movement," one commando told the Hindustan Times. "They were either army regulars or have done a long stint of commando training."

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PAKISTAN WITHDRAWS OFFER

India blamed the strike on "elements" from Pakistan, raising tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals. Pakistan said the two countries faced a common enemy and it would send a representative of its spy agency to share intelligence.

But Islamabad backtracked from an earlier promise to send the chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), a move unlikely to calm Indian tempers and raise fresh questions about who is in charge of the shadowy agency.

The militants' action has struck at the heart of a city that is the engine room of an economic boom that has made India a favorite emerging market.

It is also home to the "Bollywood" film industry, the epitome of glamour in a country still blighted by poverty.

An Indian state minister said one of the militants arrested was a Pakistani national and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh warned of "a cost" if India's neighbors did not take action to stop their territory being used to launch attacks.

TERRORISTS WANT “AN INDIAN 9/11”

The arrested man has confessed to being a member of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, which has long fought Indian forces in disputed Kashmir and was blamed for an attack on India's parliament in December 2001, newspapers said.

They said they were also inspired by the bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, according to media reports.

They had planned every detail, knew the layout of the Taj Mahal and Trident Oberoi hotels they targeted, had commando-style training and even had snacks such as dry fruit stuffed in their backpacks.

The capture of one of the militants, a clean-shaven, fluent English-speaking 21-year-old from Pakistan according to reports, has highlighted the ambitious plans of the Islamist group.

"The entire idea was to replicate the JW Marriott at the Taj," Times Now television reported, quoting a defense official present at the interrogation of Azam Amir Kasav.

He was referring to one of Pakistan's worst bomb attacks, when a lorry packed with explosives all but destroyed the hotel in Islamabad and killed at least 55 people in September.

"They wanted to reduce the symbols of economic strength to rubble, the Taj and Trident, so they cannot be rebuilt," Times Now said. "They talked of a 9/11 to bring down the buildings."

During the first hours of the attacks at landmarks across Mumbai police seemed powerless. Top officials, including the head of the city's anti-terrorist force, were gunned down.

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The use of at least 10 heavily armed and well-trained "fedayeen" bore the hallmarks of Pakistan-based militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Kasav, the militant reported to have been captured, confessed to being a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, newspapers said, but the group has denied any role in the Mumbai attacks.

But Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi struck a conciliatory note and promised full cooperation.

"Whoever has done this is neither your friend nor our friend," he told reporters in New Delhi. "We are not responsible for this, nor is it in our interest to get involved in something like this."

The attacks were carried out by at least ten young men armed with rifles and grenades, some of whom arrived by sea, who fanned out across Mumbai on Wednesday night to attack sites popular with tourists and business executives. Of these nine had been killed, Indian police said.

Authorities said 18 foreigners were among the dead. Three Germans, five Americans, one Australian, a Briton, one Canadian, two French, an Italian, a Japanese, a Singaporean and a Thai, were among the dead, according to various governments.

Eight Israelis were killed in the attacks by Islamist militants that ravaged the Indian commercial capital Mumbai, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Saturday. Six were killed in Chabad House, a Jewish cultural centre that was stormed by Indian commandos on Friday, and the other two died in attacks elsewhere in the city.

Three Turkish citizens were also among the ones taken hostage in the hotels. Three of them were rescued and returned to Turkey.