Indian forces end Mumbai siege

MUMBAI, India – Indian commandos killed the last remaining gunmen holed up at a luxury Mumbai hotel Saturday, ending a 60-hour rampage through India’s financial capital by suspected Islamic militants that left more than 150 people dead and rocked the nation.

Orange flames and black smoke engulfed the landmark 400-room Taj Mahal hotel after dawn Saturday as Indian forces ended the siege in a hail of gunfire, just hours after elite commandos stormed a Jewish center and found six hostages dead.

More than 150 people were killed and several hundreds wounded in the violence that started when more than a dozen assailants attacked 10 sites across Mumbai Wednesday night. Fifteen foreigners were among the dead.

“The Taj operation is over. The last two terrorists holed up there have been killed,” Mumbai Police Chief Hasan Ghafoor told AP.

J.K. Dutt, director general of India’s elite National Security Guard commando unit, told reporters outside the hotel that his forces would continue to search and clear the hotel.

With the end of one of the most brazen terror attacks in India’s history, attention turned from the military operation to questions of who was behind the attack and the heavy toll on human life.

Rabbi, wife among dead

The bodies of New York Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, were found at the Jewish center. Their son, Moshe, who turned two on Saturday, was scooped up by an employee Thursday as she fled the building.

Authorities scrambled to identify those responsible for the unprecedented attack, with Indian officials pointing across the border at rival Pakistan, and Pakistani leaders promising to cooperate in the investigation.

On Friday, commandos killed the last two gunmen inside the luxury Oberoi hotel, where 24 bodies had been found, authorities said.

Dozens of people – including a man clutching a baby and about 20 airline crewmembers – were evacuated from the Oberoi earlier Friday.

As fighting stretched into a fourth day Saturday, the Taj Mahal hotel was wracked by hours of intermittent gunfire and explosions, even though authorities said earlier they cleared it of gunmen.

Indian forces launched grenades and traded gunfire with what authorities believed was one or two militants holed up in the ballroom. What appeared to be a black-clad figure toppled from a first floor window, but further details were unavailable.

By Friday evening, at least nine gunmen had been killed and one arrested, said R. Patil, a top official in Maharashtra state, where Mumbai is the capital.

In the most dramatic of the counterstrikes Friday morning, masked Indian commandos rappelled from a helicopter to the rooftop of the Chabad Lubavitch Jewish center as snipers laid down cover fire.

For nearly 12 hours, explosions and gunfire erupted from the five-story building as the commandos fought their way downward, while thousands of people gathered behind barricades in the streets to watch.

The assault blew huge holes in the center, and, at one point, Indian forces fired a rocket at the building.

Soon after, elated commandos ran outside with their rifles raised over their heads in a sign of triumph.

But inside the Chabad House was a scene of tragedy.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel’s Channel 1 TV that the bodies of three women and three men were found at the center. Some of the victims had been bound, Barak said.

Local media reports, quoting top military officials, said two gunmen were found dead in the building.

The attackers were well prepared, apparently scouting some targets ahead of time and carrying large bags of almonds to keep up their energy during a long siege. One backpack found contained 400 rounds of ammunition.

Authorities were working to find out who was behind the attacks, claimed by a previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen.

President-elect Barack Obama said he was closely monitoring the situation. “These terrorists who targeted innocent civilians will not defeat India’s great democracy nor shake the will of a global coalition to defeat them,” he said in a statement.

India’s foreign minister said the blame appeared to point to Pakistan. “According to preliminary information, some elements in Pakistan are responsible for Mumbai terror attacks,” Pranab Mukherjee told reporters.

Jaiprakash Jaiswal, India’s home minister, said a captured gunman had been identified as a Pakistani.

Earlier Friday, Pakistani Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar denied involvement by his country. “I will say in very categorical terms that Pakistan is not involved in these gory incidents,” he said.

FBI to help in probe

The US government ordered FBI agents Friday to fly to India to assist in the investigation of the bloody Mumbai attacks. US citizens still in the city were warned their lives remain at risk.

Intelligence officials looked urgently for clues about the identity of the attackers, a crucial unknown as Indian officials charged, without giving details, that “elements in Pakistan” were involved.

A tentative rapprochement between the two nuclear-armed rivals could hang in the balance, and a US counterintelligence official cautioned against rushing to judgment on the origins of the militants.

President George W. Bush pledged cooperation with Indian authorities and mourned the deaths of more than 150 people.

“My administration has been working with the Indian government and the international community as Indian authorities work to ensure the safety of those still under threat,” he said in a statement from the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland. “We will continue to cooperate against these extremists who offer nothing but violence and hopelessness.”

Bush was receiving regular updates, White House press secretary Dana Perino said Friday night. Senior administration officials were focused on ensuring that Americans were being helped inevery way possible, she said.

“The administration also has continued to work with the Indian government at all levels and has offered assistance and support,” Perino said.

A US counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation, said some “signatures of the attack” were consistent with the work of militants who have fought against India in the disputed Kashmir region.

More tales of terror

At first, waiter Joseph Joy Pulithara thought the blasts were rows of liquor bottles exploding for some reason behind the Mumbai hotel’s sleek bar. Running to the scene, he found a woman screaming – and a young man spraying gunfire.

“There was almost no time to escape. Within two minutes, they were on us,” Andreina Varagona of Nashville, Tenn., said from her hospital bed in the intensive care unit. Wounded in the right leg and right arm, her curly brown hair was still caked with a friend’s blood two days later.

An Indian commando said the attackers were indiscriminate. “Whoever came in front of them, they fired,” he said.

The gunmen moved skillfully through corridors slick with blood, thwarting efforts to pin them down, and switched off lights and plunged the rooms into darkness to further confuse the commandos.

Many guests hid in their rooms until they were rescued. Others were not so lucky.

Pulithara found panicked diners and staff running through the hotel bar. In the chaos, it took him a moment to realize he had been shot.

“My friend said there was a hole in my pants, and I was bleeding,” said Pulithara, 22, who was hit in the leg.

For hundreds of others inside the hotels, however, the ordeal was just beginning.

Varagona, 45, a meditation teacher, says on her website she had taken the name Rudrani Devi, Sanskrit for “one who takes the pain away from others,” in 2002. She was having dinner with friends in the Oberoi’s plush restaurant when the gunshots rang out.

“They might have been targeting Westerners, but they still shot the wait staff,” she said. “They were of Indian, Asian descent. There wasn’t a foreigner among them.” – AP