MUMBAI, India – The only gunman captured by police after a string of attacks on Mumbai told authorities he belonged to the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, a senior police officer said Sunday.

Police have said 10 gunmen terrorized Mumbai during a 60-hour siege, and all but one were shot dead.

Joint Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria said the assailant now in custody told police the group had intended to hit more targets during their attacks on India's financial capital that left at least 174 dead.

"Lashkar-e-Taiba is behind the terrorist acts in the city," Maria told reporters. "The terrorists were from a hardcore group in the L-e-T."

India's Home Ministry could not be immediately reached for comment.

The group has long been seen as a creation of the Pakistani intelligence service to help wage its clandestine war against India in disputed Kashmir.

Police arrested the lone surviving militant, Ajmal Qasab, and Maria said he confessed his links to Lashkar during interrogation.

"Ajmal Qasab has received training in a L-e-T training camp in Pakistan," he said. "Our interrogation indicates that the terrorists had other places that they also intended to target."

Maria declined to offer any other details.

Earlier, a United States counterterrorism official had said some "signatures of the attack" were consistent with Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammed, another group that has operated in Kashmir. Both are reported to be linked to al-Qaida.

Lashkar was banned in Pakistan in 2002 under pressure from the U.S., a year after Washington and Britain listed it a terrorist group. It is since believed to have emerged under another name, Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

In April 2006, the U.S. Department of State listed Jamaat-ud-Dawa as terrorist organizations for being an "alias" of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The Pakistani government offered no immediate response.

Speaking earlier Sunday, a spokesman for a Jamat-ud Dawa denied any link to Lashkar-e-Taiba and said he condemned the attack.

"We condemn the killings of civilians. We condemn such killings in a terrorist activity, and at the same time we condemn it happening in the shape of state terrorism, as we see in Srinagar, Kashmir," Abdullah Muntazir said, referring to alleged Indian army atrocities in the disputed Kashmir region.

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Associated Press writer Chris Brummitt contributed to this report from Islamabad, Pakistan.

Even as the siege of Mumbai was still going on, the finger-pointing began. India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said "external forces" were behind the attacks, a thinly veiled reference to India's neighbor and longtime foe Pakistan. Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee went further, telling reporters that "elements with links to Pakistan" were involved. But Pakistan's President and Prime Minister both condemned the attacks and rejected any talk of Pakistani involvement. Pakistani officials also announced that the head of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence organization (ISI) — often accused of orchestrating terrorist assaults on India — would travel to India to offer assistance in investigating the Mumbai massacre.

There has been one claim of responsibility: a group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen, which e-mailed news organizations on Thursday claiming it had carried out the attacks. The group, previously unknown, may be connected with (or even an alias of) the Indian Mujahedin, which claimed responsibility for several terrorist strikes earlier this year. Indian terrorism experts say that both are likely to have connections to, or simply be renamed versions of, older Indian militant groups such as the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba or the Students Islamic Movement of India. (See pictures of two days of terror in Mumbai.)

Yet the scale and sophistication of the Mumbai attacks — which appear to have involved dozens of militants using assault rifles, grenades and explosives to simultaneously attack multiple targets — raise suspicions of involvement by more than one group, which would involve an unprecedented level of coordination.

"This is an operation of a very new type in India," wrote Walid Phares on his well-respected Counterterrorism Blog. "The 'emirs' have sent these armed elements in their 20s to strike at Indian psyche. One goal is to sink the Pakistani-Indian rapprochement ... The goal is to target India as a power engaged in the war on terror but also to further destabilize the region, including Pakistan and its neighbor Afghanistan."

Here are the groups considered the most likely culprits in the Mumbai attacks:

• Lashkar-e-Toiba (Army of the Pure), formed in 1990, probably in Afghanistan. It is based near Lahore in Pakistan and is bent on forcing India out of Kashmir. It has also said it wants to restore Islamic rule over India. Indian intelligence sources believe the group has backers within Pakistan's ISI. It also has historic links to both the Taliban and al-Qaeda. India's National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan said in 2006 that Lashkar-e-Toiba is part of the "al-Qaeda compact" and is "as big and as omnipotent" as Osama bin Laden's group.

• Jaish-e-Mohammed, which emerged in early 2000 under the leadership of Maulana Masood Azhar, who had been serving time in an Indian jail for Kashmir-related militancy but was released in exchange for Indian passengers on an Indian Airlines jet who had been hijacked to Afghanistan. The group was responsible for an attack on India's parliament in December 2001 that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war. Jaish-e-Mohammed is believed to have close links to al-Qaeda and bin Laden through a religious school in Karachi.

• The Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) is less focused on Kashmir than either Lashkar-e-Toiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed. Indian authorities say the group, formed in 1977, has close connections to a pocket of Chicago's Muslim community. Its fortunes have waxed and waned over the past three decades, but the group has recently become more active again. SIMI blamed the 9/11 attacks on Israelis and, at the same time, expressed admiration for bin Laden and his war against the West. Some Indian experts believe that Indian Mujahedin is simply a renamed SIMI.

• In the past two years, the groups listed above have sometimes been joined in operations by the Bangladeshi arm of a group known as Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami.
• Despite the ideological affinities of some of these groups with bin Laden's movement, Ajai Sahni, executive director of the New Delhi–based Institute for Conflict Management, says there is no real evidence "of any operational linkages between al-Qaeda and these groups." They may take inspiration from al-Qaeda propaganda, but they are unlikely to have direct organizational links back to bin Laden. The group is believed to be behind twin blasts in Hyderabad in 2007. Formed in 1992 in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi group has become a lot stronger in India since the massacre of Muslims by hard-line Hindu nationalists in Gujarat in 2002.

More likely, however, is that the four separate groups have begun to work together more often and in increasingly sophisticated ways. There have been instances in the past of the groups' establishing joint operational cells. While pooling resources allowed for more effective operations, it also greatly increased the risks of police infiltration. As a result, the planning of such operations has been decentralized to the point that each group of militants attacking a specific target in Mumbai on Thursday was unlikely to have been aware of the total plan.

Sahni explains that previous experience suggests that an operation of the complexity of the Mumbai attacks would be directed by handlers based outside India, who would design a plan and then contact militants within their networks based in India to carry out various missions — delivering explosives to a safe house, buying equipment and so forth — that would enable the gunmen to wreak havoc.

None of the India-based operatives would most likely know one another, nor for the most part would even meet. Contact with the handler woould always be through a public call center to make it difficult to trace calls. If an operative were picked up by police, there would be no way for him to identify fellow plotters. "It assures total anonymity," Sahni told TIME last year. "The handler is in Bangladesh or Pakistan, and the people here don't know each other. It's the most significant tactical shift in the near past and is a model for international terrorism in the future."

Sadly, the success of the Mumbai operation — at least 143 dead and, perhaps more important, two days and counting of continuous news coverage — is sure to embolden those behind it. The Indian model of disparate groups working together, if that's what it is in this case, is also likely to be copied by al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists around the world. The model, says Sahni, "is absolutely brilliant in every way."

Terror Ends With At Least 195 Dead; Tensions High Between India And Pakistan

(CBS/AP) President George W. Bush on Saturday pledged full U.S. support to India as it investigates the deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai, saying the killers "will not have the final word."

The more than 60-hour siege ended early Saturday as Indian commandos killed the last three gunmen at Mumbai's historic Taj Mahal hotel. The battle ended with several explosions and one of the gunmen falling from a hotel window, as CBS News' Celia Hatton reported tonight.

Commandos then entered the hotel to search for live ammunition the gunmen had intentionally left behind.

"We are going through the entire hotel, through the corridors, through the rooms. Until we are able to check each and every room, I will not say that my operation is over," Jyoti Krishan Dutt, director general of India's National Security Guard commando unit, told Hatton.

Bush spoke at the White House after returning from the Camp David presidential retreat where he spent Thanksgiving and monitored the rampage. The coordinated assaults left nearly 200 people dead, including six Americans, and raised tensions between India and neighboring Pakistan, two nuclear-armed rivals.

"The killers who struck this week are brutal and violent," Bush said on the South Lawn with first lady Laura Bush at his side. "But terror will not have the final word. The people of India are resilient. The people of India are strong. They have built a vibrant, multiethnic democracy. They can withstand this trial."

Before leaving Camp David in the mountains of Maryland, he held an hour-long video-teleconference with U.S. diplomats in India. He said his administration had kept President-elect Barack Obama informed since the siege began Wednesday.

"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.

"The leaders of India can know that nations around the world support them in the face of this assault on human dignity. And as the people of the world's largest democracy recover from these attacks, they can count on the people of the world's oldest democracy to stand by their side."

Those participating in the videoconference included Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; David Mulford, the U.S. ambassador to India; Paul Folmsbee, consul general at the U.S. consulate in Mumbai; and members of Bush's national security team.

"President Bush thanked our ambassador and our consul general for all the work they've done to help Americans affected by the terrorists," White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

Obama called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday night to offer condolences and was monitoring the situation.

The attacks killed at least 195 people, including 18 foreigners, in India's financial capital, the deadliest episode in India since 1993 serial bombings in Mumbai killed 257 people. Officials said the death toll is likely to rise as more bodies are found in the hotels.

Officials said they believe that just 10 well-prepared gunmen were behind the attacks that brought the city of 18 million to its knees for three days.

"Nine were killed and one was captured," Maharshta state Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh told reporters. "We are interrogating him."

Deshmukh said the attackers arrived by sea.

On Saturday the Indian navy said it was investigating whether a trawler found drifting off the coast of Mumbai, with a bound corpse on board, was used in the attack.

At left, Alan Scherr, 58, of Virginia, with his wife Kia. Scherr and his daughter Naomi, 13, were killed in the cafe at the Oberoi hotel in Mumbai during the terrorist seige there this week. The Scherrs were in Mumbai as part of a spiritual retreat.

Navy spokesman Capt. Manohar Nambiar said the trawler, named Kuber, had been found Thursday and was brought to Mumbai. Officials said they believe the boat had sailed from a port in the neighboring state of Gujarat.

Indian security officers believe many of the gunmen may have reached the city using a black and yellow rubber dinghy found near the site of the attacks.

FBI agents were en route to India on Saturday. A second group of investigators was on alert to join the first team if necessary. The State Department warned U.S. citizens still in the city that their lives remain at risk.

"The FBI continues to monitor the situation in Mumbai and the Counterterrorism Division is reviewing all of the information and intelligence available," bureau spokesman Richard Kolko said.

A previously unknown Muslim group with a name suggesting origins inside India claimed responsibility. But because the sole surviving gunman was Pakistani, Indian officials pointed a finger of blame at Pakistan, which vehemently defended itself against allegations that it was involved in the attacks.

At left, Naomi Scherr, 13, of Virginia. Scherr and her father Alan Scherr, 58, were among at least six Americans killed in the Mumbai terror attacks Nov. 27-29, 2008. They were in India on a spiritual retreat.

Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani, said in a statement that his country is "confronting the menace of terrorism with great vigor." Haqqani insisted "it is unfair to blame Pakistan or Pakistanis for these acts of terrorism even before an investigation is undertaken."

The U.S. is concerned about a potential flare-up between India and Pakistan. To ease tensions, intelligence officials are searching for clues that might identify the attackers even as Indian officials claim "elements in Pakistan" were involved.

A U.S. counterterrorism official said some "signatures of the attack" were consistent with the work of Pakistani militant groups known as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed that have fought Indian troops in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir and are reported to be linked to al Qaeda. But the official emphasized it was premature to pinpoint who was responsible for the attacks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.

But analysts say the attackers differ in style from anyone they've studied before. "In most conventional suicide terrorists, there will be some sort of suicidal device that will detonate at the very conclusion of their operation," international security expert Will Geddes told Hatton. "But it would appear that with these individuals, they were going to fight until the bitter end."

The U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India, said six Americans were killed but did not release their names.

Among the U.S. dead, according to information from organizations to which they belonged, were:

As Mumbai's hostage drama stretched toward the end of its second full day, TIME got an exclusive look at what is happening inside the Taj hotel, where it appears that the confrontation is drawing to a close. At 3:15 p.m. local time on Friday, a massive blast went off inside the hotel, loud enough to startle the hundreds of journalists gathered at the security cordon hundreds of yards behind the hotel. An officer who ran out of the hotel, carrying a pistol, said, "Now everything is burned. The stairs are burned. The woodwork is all spoiled." What did this blast mean? "They are getting desperate," he said. "You can tell by their actions."

The officer reported that commandos had trapped three terrorists on the top floor of the hotel. The rest of the suspects were on the ground floor, but he was not sure how many were in the building altogether, estimating between seven and 10. When asked whether they were trying to take any of the suspects alive, he almost smiled at the question. "If they're alive, it's just coincidence," he said.

The Taj is a beloved landmark in this city, and its residents will have to get used to the idea that the Taj will never be the same. Disbelieving Mumbaikars have been watching as their city of 12 million has been paralyzed — shops closed, streets emptied — by just two dozen attackers in the past two days. How could this happen? The unwelcome truth is that this grand cosmopolitan city, one that has survived two even deadlier terrorists bombings in 2003 and 2006, was caught completely unprepared.

The scale and sophistication of the attacks, which began at about 9:30 p.m. local time on Wednesday as gunmen stormed hotels with AK-47s and grenades, became clear on Thursday and Friday: over 155 people are reported dead, and more than 300 are injured. The injured were brought to local hospitals from the sites of the attacks, which included the Taj and another luxury hotel, the main railway terminus, a café and two hospitals. Among the police, 14 were killed and 25 injured. The Maharashtra chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, estimates that there were 20 to 25 terrorists involved, seven of them now dead.

Unlike most of the recent simultaneous bomb attacks in India, this one continued to do its damage after the initial shock wore off, gathering strength and changing form as the smoke and noise from the blasts cleared. In this case, the attackers turned hostage takers at three of the sites: the two hotels and a residential building called Nariman House.

Those stranded in hotels might have had a shorter ordeal if the hotel management had put into place at least some kind of emergency plan in case of a terrorist attack. About 100 people, including one man with a gunshot wound, took refuge in a conference center at the Taj when they heard shooting but were left there all night, with no communication from anyone, let alone any instructions on how to exit the building safely.

Hotel managers at the Taj are given some crisis-management training, but nothing that would prepare them for a situation in which the attackers were running "free and loose" inside the hotel, says Anupam Amrohi, 23, an employee of Taj hotels in Bangalore. Amrohi was on the phone with his friends trapped inside the conference center all night. "They should have pulled the alarm," he says. Instead, hotel staff advised people already inside to stay where they were. People in their rooms were told to stay put even after the firing between the police and the suspects began. Hotel operators would call them periodically to remind them to keep the lights off and the volume on the TV down.

The lack of any prior local police intelligence about the attacks — a complaint voiced by many Mumbaikars today — is particularly alarming given the meticulous planning and unusual modus operandi of the attackers. For example, an Indian navy spokesman confirmed that the terrorists entered Mumbai without detection by taking a sea route. Starting from a base in Gujarat to the north of Mumbai, they made their way to the Gateway of India at Mumbai's southern tip and another landing point on the peninsula 14 nautical miles away; they killed one boatman in the process.

The attack on the Leopold Café and Restaurant also shows intimate local knowledge. Like the Oberoi and Taj hotels, it is a favorite of foreigners, mostly backpackers and fans of the best-selling novel Shantaram, in which the Leopold is a key setting. As you come out from the Leopold, a hard right takes you into a narrow lane, which leads directly to the back entrance of the Taj. Several people in the Apna Bidi shop, around the corner from the Leopold, reported that at about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, immediately after the blasts, they saw two of the attackers with AK-47s running from the Leopold into the narrow lane that leads to the Taj. Either the terrorists were natives to the city or they had time to practice, prepare and carefully plot their targets and the path they would take between them.

As the three simultaneous hostage dramas began to unfold, onlookers gathered. "It's like watching 24 in slow motion," said Vineet Pandit, 22, who lives near the Oberoi. What they would see at each of these sites was a parade of hundreds of uniformed troops over the course of several hours: the Mumbai police, the Indian army and paramilitary groups including the Rapid Action Force and the National Security Guard's élite "Black Cat" commandos, distinctive in their all-black uniforms. It was not always clear who was in charge. On Thursday at the Taj, police officers waited idly in their jeeps as 100 army personnel tried to take control of the hotel. At the Oberoi, the police commissioner appeared to be taking the lead.

In Colaba market, a handful of terrorists stormed one of the apartment buildings at about 10 p.m. on Wednesday and then began randomly shooting and lobbing grenades into the street and at neighboring buildings, according to residents of the area. From the vantage point of three Black Cat snipers watching the building, I could see Nariman House's shattered windows. The couple who own the building are Jewish, giving rise to rumors throughout the day that "Israelis" were somehow involved in the attacks. The other people in the building, including an infant wearing a pink bonnet and green blanket, were held as hostages but released early Thursday. The last person to leave, a young woman, told authorities that the only remaining hostages were the couple, who had made no sound or movement since the night before. By 5 p.m., they were presumed to be dead, and the Black Cat commandos moved in half an hour later, unleashing a volley of gunshots into the building. By 9:30 p.m. local time, the firing was still going on, and it was not clear whether the four to five suspects inside had been killed or captured.

So who are the terrorists? That too is unclear. A group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen sent an e-mail to news organizations early Thursday morning claiming responsibility for the attacks. Two of the terrorists spoke to a local news channel, India TV, to air their grievances: "When so many of us were killed, who did anything for us?" a man called Shadullah asked, referring to anti-Muslim riots in northern India in 1992 and '93. He said he was among seven people holding hostages at the Oberoi but didn't make any specific demands other than for the release of other mujahedin jailed in India and for an end to the persecution of Muslims. He did not reveal where the group comes from, though the Deccan in its name presumably refers to the plateau that stretches across southern India.

Officals have suggested that there may have been a foreign power involved, rejecting the widespread belief among defense and political analysts that there is an able network of homegrown terrorists in India. (Major General R.K. Hooda, an army officer who was the commander for today's military operations, hinted that their accents might have been Pakistani.) So far, there have been little more than hints and platitudes from the steady stream of high-profile visitors to south Mumbai: the local strongman Raj Thackeray, Maharashtra state chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, Member of Parliament Murli Deora. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi are said to be on their way to the city, as is opposition BJP leader L.K. Advani. The question is, Will they do anything to better prepare this city, and the rest of India, for the next time?

By Bruce Crumley/Paris

The Mumbai operation that killed more than 150 people over two days in the heart of India's commercial capital marks the emergence of an unprecedented hybrid of terror tactics. "This didn't involve suicide bombers and booby-trapped cars that we commonly see in Islamist terror attacks — ones which usually end with the explosion-deaths of the kamikazes carrying them out," notes French terrorism specialist Roland Jacquard. "This is essentially a small army sent into the heart of society with orders kill and keep killing as long as possible. And they're technically capable of creating a lot of damage and death before they can be killed. So this is more like terrorism fused with insurgency and guerilla warfare."

Despite the reports the Mumbai assailants initially sought out British, American and Israeli guests in the luxury hotels they raided, the vast majority of victims so far have been Indian. That suggests that their soft-target selection wasn't designed, as a number of recent spectacular terror strikes have been, to kill as many Westerners as possible — the Mumbai attackers appear simply to have killed whomever they could.

"This detail suggests the group behind this has regional and political objectives particular — and perhaps unique — to Indian Islamists," Jacquard says. "Despite a few common elements with al-Qaeda-inspired attacks, this one didn't come out of the usual international jihad playbook. The state and its security forces aren't being attacked as you'd see in Algeria, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. And the open-ended and complex nature of the Mumbai operation is strikingly different from the sudden suicide missions we see in Iraq or Afghanistan."

Security officials have long viewed attacks on unprotected targets around the globe frequented by Westerners as a Plan B to the more ambitious attacks on Western populations in their home cities. "The jihadist symbolism may not be as great as attacking an enemy state head on, at home," one French counter-terrorism official argued prior to the Mumbai attacks. "But the panic and horror inflicted by soft-target strikes abroad can unfortunately often be just as great — and as deadly." So much so, in fact, that European security officials see their citizens being at greater risk of being targeted by terrorists abroad than they would be at home. That's one reason France and most other nations have requested citizens to stay out of terror-prone countries such as Algeria, and advise against non-essential travel to places such as Pakistan and Yemen.

In spite of heightened security around the globe in the wake of 9/11 and attacks that followed in Bali, Madrid, London, Casablanca and elsewhere, terrorists can contemplate shopping malls, cinemas or sports events among myriad soft targets available in every city in the world.

"Wherever it is, a soft target is by definition one that's fat and relatively unprotected, and the only way of avoiding them are basically to stay locked away at home and shun all the activities, events, and celebrations that often make life a joy," the French official says. "But if we do that, we give the terrorists what they want."

By MIAN RIDGE

Hidden behind the concrete sprawl of a prosperous New Delhi neighborhood, the Lal Mahal or "red palace" attracted few visitors. Guidebooks neglected to mention that this crumbling sandstone building was India's oldest surviving Islamic palace.

Then, on Nov. 1, within a few hours, the 800-year-old structure was demolished by a private developer. Horrified conservationists complained to the city authorities, but there was little they could do: The Lal Mahal was not on the government's list of protected buildings.

This is a depressingly familiar story in India, where only a fraction of historic buildings are protected by law. And as millions of people move from the countryside to India's cities, cash-hungry property developers are tempted to demolish whatever stands in their way.

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), a government body, has a list of more than 3,600 protected monuments that it must protect and conserve.

But the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), a nongovernmental, nonprofit organization, says there are at least 70,000 old buildings and monuments that should be granted government protection.

"The Lal Mahal was certainly one of them," says O.P. Jain, a leading conservationist. "It's terrible that this should be allowed to happen to a building of national importance."

He points out that even those buildings that are theoretically guaranteed government protection are at risk.

Last year, India's culture and tourism ministry was forced to admit that 35 of the buildings on the ASI's list had been destroyed. Twelve of them disappeared within a few miles of the ministry in New Delhi, among them a magnificent city gate built by the 16th-century ruler Sher Shah.

A dozen more monuments in New Delhi, said the ministry, had been ruined by the encroachment of developers. Legislation passed in 1992 forbids construction within 100 meters (328 feet) of protected buildings. But the law is only patchily enforced.

The survival of India's unlisted buildings, meanwhile, may only be a question of time.

"There are two big problems: the way protected monuments are cared for, and the fact that there are many, many buildings that simply aren't listed at all," says historian and writer William Dalrymple.

In the two decades that he has lived in New Delhi he's seen many old buildings disappear. He cites Old Delhi – the 17th-century city built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan – where, "there are hardly any of the old houses left."

The pace of obliteration is quickening as India struggles to cope with the mass movement of migrants from the countryside to the cities.

By 2030, India's urban population is expected to have swelled from 285 million to 575 million.

Take New Delhi, a city dotted with remnants of its invaders, from the Muslim emperors who ruled it for more than 500 years to the British colonialists who followed.

"Surely, in no city on earth – not even Rome itself – are linked memories of bygone dynasties so thick as here," wrote a traveling German soldier, Count Hans von Koenigsmarck, in 1910.

But today, the half million new inhabitants that relocate to the city every year are also leaving their mark. Mughal ruins stand forlornly in the middle of busy roundabouts, or are used as garbage dumps and urinals, while several elegant bungalows built by British architect Edwin Lutyens may soon be demolished.

"This is isn't a concern limited to New Delhi," says the ASI's director general, Anshu Vaish, when asked about the fate of the Lal Mahal. "It is something that happens all over the world, where there's urbanization and commercialization."

Furthermore, in this city of 15 million people, nearly half of whom live in slums, without proper sanitation, some say city authorities have more pressing priorities than conserving old buildings.

Conservationists like Mr. Jain, however, say that the authorities do not have to choose between preservation and development.

Indeed, especially in New Delhi, the government recognizes the importance of historical monuments for the city's global standing. Ahead of the Commonwealth Games, which the city is to host in 2010, New Delhi is planning a clean up of its most famous heritage buildings.

In 2003, Humayun's Tomb, the bulbous-domed 16th-century precursor to the Taj Mahal – which attracts hordes of tourists every year – was given a $650,000 cleanup. Only yards away, the Lal Mahal, built three centuries earlier, would have drawn foreign tourists, prepared to pay high entry fees – if only it had been given the recognition it deserved, says Mr. Jain.

He hopes that a new list of protected monuments, currently being drawn up by INTACH will make it harder for developers to take advantage of India's inadequate conservation efforts.

"But we also have to educate people, tell them that India's past heritage – as well as its future – has great value."

www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2008 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

By ROBERT BAER Robert Baer

Three days after the Mumbai attacks, it is unclear who is behind them. And that in itself tells a story.

Terrorism experts have been all over television and the Internet speculating on the identity of the perpetrators, more often than not attempting to divine their identity from the group's tactics. The problem is that terrorists do not follow rule books; they learn and adapt from other groups. The fact that suicide bombers did not blow themselves up in the lobbies of the Oberoi or Taj hotels does not mean they are not from al-Qaeda. (See photos of the chaos in Mumbai)

What we should be certain of, though, is that the Mumbai attackers were combat trained. You do not sustain a military assault for three days, taking only combat naps, unless you know what you are doing. You have to have been shot at before. You cannot be intimidated by flash-bang grenades, or commandos fast-roping down the side of a building. And it is almost certain that the planners of the attack understood that the only way to get into India with the amount of weapons and explosives used in the attacks was by sea - the risk of smuggling them in over land was too great.

Indulging in the same sort of speculation as the terrorism experts, I would say it's likely the attackers picked up their combat experience in Afghanistan. They could have come out of Iraq as well, but Mumbai seems a little far afield for Iraqis. Again, at this point none of this is certain. We may find out the killers were Hindu extremists, or Tamil separatists.

There are two lessons we should be taking away from Mumbai. The first is that all large cities are vulnerable to attack. Even if it doubled the size of its police force, there is no way New York City could could ever protect its hotels, schools or other public buildings from attacks of this type, short of turning them into fortresses. There is no way for the NYPD to prevent a car bombing on Wall Street, sending the stock market into an even worse plunge, or a single suicide bomber from blowing himself up in the subway. Plans are available on the Internet for making bombs like these with ingredients available in hardware stores.

The second reminder we should take from Mumbai is that the longer the wars go on in Iraq and Afghanistan, the more combat-experienced men there will be available to planners of terror attacks. And we should count on the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan going global - there is no reason they could not blend into the waves of immigrants crossing the Mediterranean from Northern Africa to Europe every day.

The best answer to the attack on Mumbai is a measured one: If it turns out the attackers came from Pakistan, they are very unlikely to have been sent by that country's government. So the last thing India should do is confront the government of Pakistan, or isolate it. That would only strengthen the hand of the extremists.

View this article on Time.com

By ARON HELLER, Associated Press Writer

KFAR CHABAD, Israel – Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife Rivkah had no fear when they embarked on their mission to open a Jewish center in the Indian city of Mumbai, her brother said Saturday night as relatives in Israel prepared to bury the couple slain in a three-day terror spree.

The 29-year-old rabbi, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, and his 28-year-old Israeli wife were among nine killed in the center run by the ultra-orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch sect and nearly 200 dead in the 60-hour rampage by suspected Muslim militants. The carnage ended earlier Saturday.

"She went with courage to this mission in India," Rivkah's brother Shmuel Rosenberg told The Associated Press after the end of the Jewish Sabbath. He described her as a strong, industrious and intelligent woman with a nuanced mind. "She had no fear," and neither did her husband, he said.

On the streets of Jerusalem, residents were aghast at the crime but all too accustomed to the pattern.

"It was a horrendous and horrible perpetration of malice and barbarism," said Michael Bregman, 42, of Jerusalem. But "it comes as no surprise" because militant groups have announced they are "going to target Jews wherever they are," he added.

Israel's Foreign Ministry said nine people were killed in an attack on the Chabad House, part of a spectacular assault on luxury hotels and other targets frequented by foreigners across the city. Most were Israelis, some with dual American citizenship, and all of them Jewish.

Indian commandos stormed the building on Friday, but none of the hostages was found alive.

The couple, members of the New York-based Chabad-Lubavitch sect who lived in both Brooklyn and Israel before they went to India in 2003, were sent on a mission to provide Jewish businesspeople and backpackers "with a kosher place to eat, a warm place to visit, put on phylacteries, hear a sermon, or receive a blessing from a rabbi," said Rivkah's brother.

Israelis living in the sprawling city were like family at the center, where Rivkah would cook for dozens of visitors every night, he said.

The Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch sect has thousands of envoys on similar outreach missions all over the world.

The Holtzbergs will be flown to Israel for burial, Rosenberg said. A Chabad spokesman said they likely would be buried Monday.

The couple's toddler son Moshe, who celebrated his second birthday Saturday, was spirited out of the five-story building by a center employee Thursday morning, unharmed but his pants soaked with blood. Another son, who was ailing, was in Israel at the time.

By late Saturday, three other victims at the Chabad House in addition to the Holtzbergs had been identified: Bentzion Chroman, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, Rabbi Leibish Teitelbaum, a U.S. citizen who lived in Jerusalem, and an Israeli tourist, Yocheved Orpaz.

Israeli media reported that the victims were found wrapped in prayer shawls in accordance with Jewish burial tradition. The reports speculated that one of the hostages wrapped the bodies before he was killed.

At the Chabad sect's center in Israel, Kfar Chabad, Sabbath began before the hostages were confirmed dead. Orthodox Jews are forbidden to use phones or other electronic devices until the Sabbath ends at sundown Saturday. On Friday night, worshippers recited the Book of Psalms, prayers Jews sometimes invoke in the hope of averting tragedy.

But when the Sabbath ended, their worst fears were confirmed.

"Chabad is one big family. We all know everyone, so it is a terrible, intimate and profound loss," group spokesman Moni Ender said, speaking from Kfar Chabad.

The Israelis killed in Mumbai were the top story for Israeli media Saturday night and major networks dispatched reporters to the Indian city.

A little-known Muslim group with a name suggesting origins inside India claimed responsibility for the attacks. But Indian officials pointed a finger at neighboring Pakistan.

Israeli officials said the assault on the Jewish center was no coincidence.

"The fact that the attack took place at the Chabad House is the clearest sign that the attack was directed against Jews and Israelis," Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Friday.

Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, wondered publicly if Indian security forces performed as competently as Israel, with its vaunted military, might have hoped.

The gunmen entered the Jewish center Wednesday night. But Indian commandos, some rappelling onto the roof by ropes from a helicopter, did not storm it until early Friday.

Barak acknowledged the complexity of ending multiple, simultaneous attacks, but said Indian forces were not on par with elite Israeli units.

"I'm not sure it had to last three days, but that's what happened," he said Friday night.

India has become a favorite destination for Israelis, and thousands of backpackers head there each year in what has become a coming-of-age ritual after military service.

Israel has in the past warned its travelers to maintain a low profile while visiting overseas and not to draw attention to themselves. But the Foreign Ministry has not issued a travel advisory on India since the Mumbai attack.

Arik Aronov, 25, said he "never felt unsafe" when he backpacked in India, though he said he steered clear of large groups of Israelis.

"I don't think that (Israelis) should be afraid of going there."

By RYAN LUCAS, Associated Press Writer

BESMAYA RANGE COMPLEX, Iraq – Two Iraqi soldiers acting as insurgents hook up a cellular phone detonator to a 155mm artillery shell with a coiled red wire, bury the mock bomb in a pile of dirt next to a rusty electricity pole and then disappear down the street.

Minutes later, an Iraqi army patrol in Humvees and an armored vehicle with radio-jamming equipment speed into the dusty intersection and disable the bomb remotely with a robot, as U.S. and Iraqi generals observe the training drill from the shade of a tent.

The exercise at this sandy, wind-swept Iraqi military base south of Baghdad is part of U.S. efforts to pass on hard-learned lessons to Iraq's army on how to combat what has long been the insurgent weapon of choice — roadside bombs.

The need for Iraqi units that can clear streets of explosives is pressing. Last Thursday, Iraq's parliament approved a security agreement that would pull American troops out of Iraqi towns and cities by July 2009 ahead of a withdrawal from the country by the end of 2011.

"The goal is to provide the capabilities to the Iraqi army and Iraq to be able to get firsthand into the counter-IED fight," Capt. Miguel Torres said, using the military acronym for Improvised Explosive Device, or roadside bomb.

"IEDs are one of the primary killers in the country for coalition forces and Iraqi army forces and civilians. We want to take that tool from the insurgents," he said.

Torres works for the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, or MNSTC-I, which is responsible for training the Iraqi military. He serves as the chief U.S. adviser for bomb disposal training at Besmaya, a sprawling Iraqi base and firing range on an arid plain 13 miles (20 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad.

When U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in March 2003, the military did not foresee roadside bombs as a primary threat to American forces. But as violence escalated, insurgents who could not win a head-on fight with U.S. troops increasingly resorted to roadside bombs, which became a top killer of American soldiers.

The U.S. developed an array of techniques and expensive equipment to counter the threat, including adding armor on Humvees and dispatching new "MRAP" troop carriers with V-shaped undercarriages to deflect the blast of roadside bombs.

The security situation has improved dramatically in Iraq since last year. A Web site that tracks military casualties in Iraq, icasualty.org, says American deaths from roadside bombs plummeted from 432 in 2006 to 130 so far this year.

The brunt of roadside bomb attacks fall now on Iraqi security forces and civilians.

"Insurgents can't fight the Iraqi army face-to-face, so they use IEDs to hit the people," Col. Abbas Fadhil, an Iraqi commander at the base, said during a lunch of rice, grilled fish and mutton.

The lessons the U.S. has picked up — along with some key pieces of high-tech equipment — are being passed on to the Iraqis.

The training at Besmaya includes a 12-week bomb disposal course that teaches soldiers the basics of identifying explosives and detonating them. The students can then enroll in a seven-week advanced roadside bomb disposal course that provides soldiers the tools and skills to defuse IEDs.

The Iraqi military runs the courses, while U.S. personnel act as advisers.

Key pieces of technology include the Badger light armored vehicle, an eight-person vehicle with a long arm topped with two spikes used to unearth hidden roadside bombs; the Mini Andros II robot to defuse bombs, and Symphony electronic frequency-jamming technology to block signals that remotely trigger the explosives.

Some 1,200 Iraqis have completed the basic course, and 220 of those have graduated from the advanced roadside bomb class.

U.S. officials said they hope to have an engineer battalion for every Iraqi army division to clear roadside bombs by the end of next year.

Brig. Gen. Steven Salazar, a deputy commanding general of MNSTC-I's advisory team, said the Iraqis had made strides.

"I could put Iraqis in American gear and have them go through a drill like today's, and you'd think they were American soldiers," he said. "They're that good."

By AMBIKA AHUJA, Associated Press Writers

BANGKOK, Thailand – Unidentified assailants set off explosions at anti-government protest sites Sunday, wounding 51 people and raising fears of widening confrontations in Thailand's worst political crisis that has strangled its economy and shut down its airports.

The first blast occurred inside Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat's office compound, which protesters seized in August and have held ever since. Suriyasai Katasiya, a spokesman for the protest group, said a grenade landed on the roof of a tent under which protesters were resting, rolled down to the ground and exploded.

At least 49 people were injured, said Surachet Sathitniramai at the Narenthorn Medical Center. He said nine of them were hospitalized, including four in serious condition.

Twenty-minutes after the compound attack, two more blasts rocked an anti-government television station but there were no injuries, Suriyasai said.

In another pre-dawn strike, an explosive device detonated on the road near the main entrance to the domestic Don Muang airport. Surachet and an Associated Press television cameraman said two people were wounded.

No one claimed responsibility for the blasts but Suriyasai blamed the government.

Tensions were rising as a pro-government group scheduled to hold a rally in the heart of Bangkok later Sunday to express its support for Somchai, who is operating out of the northern city of Chiang Mai.

The prime minister has been reluctant to use force to evict the demonstrators from the People's Alliance for Democracy, who on Tuesday night overran Suvarnabhumi airport, the country's main international gateway and one of the busiest airports in the world.

The alliance seized the domestic Don Muang airport a day later, severing the capital from all commercial air traffic and virtually paralyzing the government.

The demonstrators say they will not leave until Somchai resigns, accusing him of being a puppet for ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the original hate figure for the alliance.

"Brothers and sisters, please be patient. As soon as the government is out of power, we will go home immediately," said an alliance leader Chamlong Srimuang in a speech.

Somchai has appeared at a loss on how to end the crisis but still refuses to step down. The police have their hands tied because of Somchai's reluctance to use force and the military's refusal to get involved, creating the worst political deadlock in the country's history that is taking a severe toll on its economy and reputation.

Hundreds of flights have been canceled, stranding up to 100,000 travelers, devastating the country's tourism-dependent economy and disrupting schedules and budgets of airlines around the world.

Some airlines were using the airport at the U-Tapao naval base, about 90 miles (140 kilometers) southeast of Bangkok. But authorities there were overwhelmed with hundreds of screaming and shoving passengers cramming into the small facility, trying to get their bags scanned through a single X-ray machine.

All rescue flights — to Moscow, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Phuket — were delayed, some by several hours. The parking lot was jammed with buses, taxis and vans. The Red Cross set up a tent in the parking area where women handed out sandwiches.

Deputy Prime Minister Olarn Chaipravat, who oversees economic affairs, said foreign tourist arrivals next year was expected to fall by half to about 6 million, resulting in 1 million job losses in the crucial tourism industry.

The Federation of Thai Industries has estimated the takeover of the airports is costing the country $57 million to $85 million a day. Some of its members have suggested they might not pay taxes to protest the standoff.

"The situation has gone from bad to worse, signaling that it (the government) is incompetent at ensuring peace and order," the Thai Chamber of Commerce said in a statement Saturday.

Some Thais are looking to the judiciary for a way out of the crisis. The Constitutional Court is expected to rule as soon as next week on whether three parties in the governing coalition including Somchai's People's Power Party committed electoral fraud.

If found guilty, the parties would be dissolved immediately, and executive members including Somchai would be barred from politics for five years. Non-executive members could, however, switch to another party.

Others are counting on the monarchy to end the standoff. The revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who has repeatedly brought calm in times of turbulence during his 62-year reign, will give his annual birthday-eve speech on Dec. 4.

"No one else can fix this. The country is so divided. The only uniting figure we have is the king. If he tells both sides to step back, they will," said a 36-year-old coffee shop owner Natta Siritanond.

___

Associated Press reporters Nicholas Tatro, Vijay Joshi and Michael Casey contributed to this report.

By JYOTI THOTTAM / MUMBAI

By Saturday morning, the end of Mumbai's nightmare was practically at hand. The day before, two of the three hostage sites in the city had been secured: the Oberoi Hotel and Nariman House, the site of the Jewish hospitality center, were finally wrested from terrorist hands. The siege of the Taj dragged on into the night, however, despite assurances earlier on Friday from authorities with the National Security Guard, an elite Army unit, that the agony of the ornate and historic hotel was nearing an end. As most of the city slept, the Taj suffered at least six more massive blasts into the early hours of Saturday. But by day, unconfirmed reports had the last terrorist gunman run to ground. Now, as the city slowly comes back to life, its residents are grappling with the attacks' emotional and financial impact.

Mumbai has always been proud of its resilience, but there is a profound sense that the city will not recover as quickly as it did after the blasts of 2003 or the train attacks of 2006. Ashish Contractor, a doctor who lives in Colaba, near Nariman House, explained that this week's attacks brought terror into the lives of Mumbai's most privileged, those who always thought of South Mumbai as an oasis from the rest of the city. "This is a totally different segment which always thought of itself as immune," he says. "Everybody in South Mumbai knows somebody who was at the Taj... The false calm is shattered." (See here for pictures of terror in Mumbai.)

That sense of unease is making it difficult for lifelong Mumbaikars to return to the lives they knew before the attacks. Sheetal Mafatlal, owner of the retailer Mafatlal Luxury and member of a prominent local business family, went to her office in Nariman Point today mainly to shore up the morale of her employees. "It shows a lot of courage that they decided to show up," she says. "We must get back to work." But she is unsure what the future will hold. "There's an economic meltdown on top of this. It's going to take a while to recover." She has shelved plans for a boutique in South Mumbai. "That's a very far away possibility."

Friday, however, had shown the government finally taking control, quelling much of the chaos that broke out on Wednesday night. Commandoes from the National Security Force,, began their assault on the Oberoi at about 11:30 a.m. local time. Within half an hour, the first batch of released hostages were coming out. By 2:30 p.m., the battle for the hotel was over, and the leader of the NSG team said that two terrorists had been killed in the fighting. In all, 148 people - both hostages and those who had been trapped in their rooms - were brought out safely. The bodies of 24 hotel guests were also recovered.

Their release gave the rest of the world a glance at what the siege looked like from the inside: hotel guests survived on drinks and snacks from the mini bar, with no official information reaching them. Among the first batch of released hostages was Kareem Sharif, an American-Canadian citizen, looking shaken but relieved. He said he'd been in the spa when the terrorists came in at 10:30 on Wednesday night and unleashed mayhem. He says they fired indiscriminately, and people took shelter wherever they could. David Jacobs, an Australian, said it wasn't the lack of food and water that worried him most; it was the fire raging right outside his hotel room as the commandos moved closer.

The 12-hour siege of Nariman House began dramatically, as an Indian Air Force helicopter dropped commandos on the roof of two adjacent buildings at about 7:30 a.m. local time. They came in three sorties of 10, 15 and then five men, the last group also bringing a lot of equipment. By 9:30 a.m., the gun battle between the terrorists and the commandoes had begun, and would continue sporadically throughout the day. It was a bizarre scene: in the thickly populated neighborhood, with the gunfire raging in a cluster of buildings, people went about their lives just beyond the police cordons. The vegetable sellers in the nearby open market set up shop today, although most other businesses remained closed. The Nariman House siege ended in the evening only after the commandoes blasted each floor of the five-story building to make certain they were cleared of terrorists. When the operation was finally declared over, people shouted patriotic slogans in the streets.

- With reporting by Madhur Singh/Mumbai

By TIM SULLIVAN and RAVI NESSMAN, Associated Press Writers

MUMBAI, India – 9:21 p.m. Wednesday, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus __ Two young men walk casually through Mumbai's main railway station, a worn Victorian hulk bustling with late commuters heading home, scurrying past small food stands and juice bars and vendors selling newspapers. They enter near the taxi stand, where long lines of battered black and yellow cabs wait for fares. One wears khaki cargo pants and a blue T-shirt. A pair of small knapsacks are slung over a shoulder. He looks like a college kid.

They are, says a photographer who follows them on part of their grim journey, "backpackers with assault rifles."

The two — and other death squads working in pairs — are to wreak carnage in landmark after landmark across Mumbai over the next three days, creating panic in this normally unflappable city and killing at least 174 people, according to revised government estimates.

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Sebastian D'Souza hears the gunfire at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus from his office across the street at the Mumbai Mirror tabloid.

He follows the sound through the sprawling station, slipping unseen through parked trains. When he first catches sight of the young men, he doesn't realize they are the gunmen. They look so innocent. Then he sees them shooting.

"They were firing from their hips. Very professional. Very cool," says D'Souza, the newspaper's photo editor. For more than 45 minutes he follows as they move from platform to platform shooting and throwing grenades. Often, D'Souza isn't even 30 feet away. The few police at the station are either dead, in hiding or had long fled.

There are billboards everywhere, signs of India's economic boom. At one point, he photographs them standing beneath a tea company sign. They appear to be having a calm conversation. "WAKE UP!" the billboard reads.

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They were 10 gunmen, well-trained and armed with assault rifles and grenades, officials say. They had scouted their targets ahead of time. The knew the hallways and the basements. They even carried bags of almonds for energy. Police say they were Muslim extremists from Pakistan, and may be tied to India's long-running insurgency in the disputed, largely Muslim, Himalayan region of Kashmir.

They landed in an inflatable rubber boat not long after nightfall on a Mumbai beach, a semi-isolated stretch of sand and stone where fisherman bring in their boats during the daytime. From there, it was less than a 15-minutes walk to their major targets. The group fanned out across the city, hitting 10 spots in two hours. They chose some of the best-known landmarks, many popular with foreigners and the city's elite. Many of the attacks ended in minutes. But at two luxury hotels and a Jewish center they dug in, fending off hundreds of commandos for days.

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About 9:30 p.m.

Nariman House, Mumbai headquarters of the ultra-Orthodox Chabad Lubavitch movement.

A gunshot startles the family of Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and others inside the recently renovated five-story Jewish center on a bumpy, unpaved back road off a main street in Mumbai's trendy Colaba neighborhood. The pale yellow building, with its synagogue, kosher dining room and friendly rabbi, was a magnet for Israeli backpackers looking for a place to celebrate holidays while on vacation and an important religious center for Mumbai's small Jewish community.

Someone must be lighting firecrackers, thought Sandra Samuel, a maid at the center.

Then a gunman came up the stairs.

She and another employee duck into a room and hid in terror as explosions and gunshots rattle the building through the night.

"They destroyed everything, the lift, the dining room, everything," she says later.

At about the same time

Leopold Cafe and Bar

The place known as Leo's is one of the city's famous tourist restaurants, a joint crammed with glass-topped tables, old travel posters and lounging backpackers drinking cheap beer.

There are maybe 100 people inside when two gunmen appear in the entrances. One lobs in a grenade. Then they open fire.

"It was total chaos ... People didn't know what was going on. Some hit the floor, some ran out of the side entrance or tried to find a place to hide," says Farzad Jehani, who owns the restaurant with his brother.

The assault lasts, perhaps, two minutes. When it's over, at least four foreigners and three Indians are dead, though the brothers aren't sure because patrons quickly rush the casualties to hospitals in passing cars and taxis.

By then the gunmen have left, jogging through the streets and apparently moving on to one of India's most famous hotels just a few blocks away.

"They weren't aiming at anyone in particular. It was like they wanted to empty their magazines and do as much damage here as possible before heading to the Taj," Jehani says.

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About 9:45 p.m.

Taj Mahal hotel

No one believes it's gunfire. Not at the Taj. Built more than a century ago by one of India's most powerful business families, the castle-like Taj Mahal is the crossroads of the city's elite. It has been the scene of countless society weddings, business meetings and expensive dates. It is an icon of Mumbai.

But it is gunfire that two men are spraying across the ornate lobby, with its gray marble floor and Persian carpets the size of small swimming pools.

Dalbir Bains, who runs a high-end Mumbai lingerie shop, is sitting down to a steak dinner by the pool with friends. They joke about hearing gunfire. Quickly, though, screams fill the hotel and her laughs turn to terror. She runs upstairs and huddles under a table in a restaurant with about 50 others, desperately trying to be quiet.

"The gun shots were following us," says Bains.

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9:47 p.m.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus

The gunmen shoot toward a large glass-fronted restaurant.

They are "firing at people waiting for the train. Luggage was spread everywhere. The place was full of blood. There were lots of people lying there dead," says manager Fongen Fernandes.

Soon, though, everyone is dead or hiding. Except for corpses, the platforms are empty, d'Souza says.

The worst of the carnage appears to be in a waiting room for out-of-town trains. It was filled with dozens of bodies, many shot in the head. Overall, authorities say, 53 people are killed.

Eventually, the gunmen steal a truck and drive away. A little later, one is killed by police and another, the only gunmen taken alive, is captured. He is Pakistani.

At the station, authorities use wooden baggage carts to clear the corpses.

Says Fernandes: "They collected them away like sheep and goats."

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About 10 p.m.

Oberoi Hotel

Joseph Joy Pulithara, a waiter, is working in the Chinese restaurant of this modern luxurious monolith when the gunfire starts, sending diners and staff scrambling. Pulithara is shot in the leg. A woman nearby him is shot in the head.

The gunmen run into another restaurant and fire unrelenting bursts at the diners and waiters, says Andreina Varagona, an American meditation teacher shot in the arm and leg. At least a dozen people fall to the floor dead, including one of Varagona's friends.

"There were bodies everywhere," Varagona says. "I felt like I was in a movie."

The attackers herd dozens of survivors into a stairwell. One demands to see their IDs, saying he was looking for Americans and Britons. Then he forces them upstairs, says Alex Chamberlain, a British guest.

Chamberlain and many others throughout the hotel dash out in the chaos.

Staff in one restaurant spirit at least 60 diners into a back kitchen and then hustle them to another room where they are served refreshments and then escorted outside, according to the hotel's chairman P.R.S. Oberoi.

Other guests barricade themselves in their rooms.

The gunmen are taking hostages.

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10:35 p.m.

Gunmen briefly attack a police station. A few minutes later they open fire at a hospital, then ambush a police car, killing five officers and driving away. Soon after, a bomb explodes in a taxi in the suburban neighborhood of Vile Parle. About 15 minutes later, a bomb goes off in another taxi inside the city. One person is believed killed.

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Thursday morning

The Oberoi

A banner hanging from a window carries a simple but wrenching plea: "Save Us."

Inside, hundreds are hiding in their rooms, or being held hostage.

The gunmen, armed with rifles and grenades, push Egyptian businessman Osama Embabi into a room where four or five people — guests from other Arab countries and hotel workers — are already being held.

"They shouted and warned us not to leave the room or we would be shot," he says.

Meanwhile, Lo Hoei Yen, a 28-year-old Singaporean lawyer, calls her husband, Michael, from her cell phone. She is being held captive, she tells him, and the gunmen threaten to kill her if Indian forces storm the hotel, Singapore media reports say.

After 9 a.m., Indian forces begin what will be a daylong operation to rescue the Oberoi hostages.

Lo's body is found on the 19th floor.

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Thursday

Across the city, it seems the Indian police and military may never catch up. They are fighting gunmen in three locations, including two of the city's most famous landmarks, and hundreds of people are trapped. Fires burn occasionally in both hotels, and firefighters with water hoses and cherry pickers battle the blazes, but only when it's safe enough to approach the buildings. Gunshots and explosions have become the soundtrack of south Mumbai.

Residents have faced terrorism before, but this time it seems different.

"There is a limit a city can take," says Ayesha Dar, a 33-year-old homemaker.

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10:45 a.m.

Nariman House

The Jewish center is silent, except for the wailing of a child.

Samuel, the maid, cracks open the door of her hiding place and sees a deserted staircase. She runs up one flight and finds the rabbi's 2-year-old son Moshe crying beside his parents and two Israeli guests who lay still on the floor. His pants are drenched with blood. She grabs the boy, bolts down the stairs and out of the building.

----

The soldiers who fought the gunman say they were tough, bitter opponents.

"It's obvious they were trained somewhere ... Not everyone can handle the AK series of weapons or throw grenades like that," an unidentified member of India's Marine Commando unit, his face wrapped in a black mask, tells reporters after his units stormed the hotels. The attackers were "very determined and remorseless."

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Friday

About 7 a.m.

Nariman House

Black-clad commandos fan out on the rooftops of the evacuated buildings surrounding the Jewish center and begin laying down covering fire.

A helicopter drops toward the roof. One after another, masked commandos slither down a rope. The helicopter returns with more commandos, then a third time with equipment.

Slowly, the assault team descends an outside staircase and begins clearing the building.

A small explosion erupts from the house. A few seconds later, two gunshots, a pause, then two more. For hours, a similar pattern is repeated. Holes are blasted in the building as hundreds of gawkers cheer from nearby streets.

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Friday morning

The Oberoi

Dozens of hostages clutching passports are rushed from the hotel into waiting cars, buses and ambulances.

At 3 p.m., the government announces it has killed the two gunmen inside and taken control of the building.

The pair had killed 32 people — 22 hotel guests and 10 workers — and wounded many more.

By evening, more than 100 former hostages have been escorted from the building.

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5:39 p.m.

Nariman House

Indian commandos launch a rocket at one of the Jewish center's upper floors, shaking the neighborhood and blowing out windows in neighboring buildings.

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6:15 p.m.

Nariman House

A small group of commandos appear in the street, raising their rifles in triumph. The crowd breaks through police barriers and floods the streets in celebration.

Inside the building, nine people lay dead, including the rabbi and his wife. According to Israeli media reports, some are wrapped in prayer shawls.

----

Overnight Friday

Taj Mahal

Fighting continues at the seaside hotel. Authorities say one, perhaps two, gunmen are still inside. Explosions and gunfire ring out intermittently, intensifying at dawn. Fire, once again, streams out through broken windows, lapping at the stone sides of the building. Clouds of black smoke rise high above the Arabian Sea. Outside, dozens of reporters crouch in the seaside plaza in front of the Taj, and sometimes a half-dozen TV reporters can be heard at once providing breathless commentaries about the situation. Few bother to take cover.

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8:30 a.m. Saturday

Taj Mahal.

After so much destruction it ends quietly. There is no announcement of victory. One minute, there are explosions inside, and a few minutes later a man walks casually out into the plaza out front — a place where soldiers in body armor had been sprinting in fear — and waves for firefighters to come put out the remaining blazes.

The Taj Mahal siege is declared over, ending three days of terror. It has been 60 hours since the first pair of gunmen walked into the train station.

Outside, bits of burned debris fill the plaza. Strings of white bed sheets, tied together, hang from the windows, reminders of those who escaped. Almost a dozen buses are parked nearby, just a few feet from the Arabian Sea. They are filled with soldiers and commandos finally getting a break.

Hundreds of people push their way toward the buses, pressing flowers into their hands.

___

Tim Sullivan contributed to this story from New Delhi and Ravi Nessman from Mumbai. Associated Press writers Ramola Talwar Badam, Erika Kinetz, Anita Chang, Jenny Barchfield and Paul Peachey contributed to this report.

The disembodied voice was chilling in its rage. A gunman, holed up in the Oberoi Trident hotel in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), where some 40 people had been taken hostage, told an Indian news channel that the attacks were revenge for the persecution of Muslims in India. "We love this as our country, but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?" he asked via telephone. No answer came. But then he probably wasn't expecting one.

The roots of Muslim rage run deep in India, nourished by a long-held sense of injustice over what many Indian Muslims believe is institutionalized discrimination against the country's largest minority group. The disparities between Muslims, who make up 13.4% of the population, and India's Hindus, who hover at around 80%, are striking. There are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking, Muslim Indians have shorter life spans, worse health, lower literacy levels and lower-paying jobs. Add to that toxic brew the lingering resentment over 2002's anti-Muslim riots in the state of Gujarat. The riots, instigated by Hindu nationalists, killed some 2,000 people, most of them Muslims. To this day, few of the perpetrators have been convicted. (See pictures of the terrorist shootings in Mumbai.)

The huge gap between Muslims and Hindus will continue to haunt India's — and neighboring Pakistan's — progress toward peace and prosperity. But before intercommunal relations can improve, there are even bigger problems that must first be worked out: the schism in subcontinental Islam and the religion's place and role in modern India and Pakistan. It is a crisis 150 years in the making.

The Beginning of the Problem
On the afternoon of March 29, 1857, Mangal Pandey, a handsome, mustachioed soldier in the East India Company's native regiment, attacked his British lieutenant. His hanging a week later sparked a subcontinental revolt known to Indians as the first war of independence and to the British as the Sepoy Mutiny. Retribution was swift, and though Pandey was a Hindu, it was the subcontinent's Muslims, whose Mughal King nominally held power in Delhi, who bore the brunt of British rage. The remnants of the Mughal Empire were dismantled, and 500 years of Muslim supremacy on the subcontinent came to a halt.

Muslim society in India collapsed. The British imposed English as the official language. The impact was cataclysmic. Muslims went from near 100% literacy to 20% within a half-century. The country's educated Muslim élite was effectively blocked from administrative jobs in the government. Between 1858 and 1878, only 57 out of 3,100 graduates of Calcutta University — then the center of South Asian education — were Muslims. While discrimination by both Hindus and the British played a role, it was as if the whole of Muslim society had retreated to lick its collective wounds.

Out of this period of introspection, two rival movements emerged to foster an Islamic ascendancy. Revivalist groups blamed the collapse of their empire on a society that had strayed too far from the teachings of the Koran. They promoted a return to a purer form of Islam, modeled on the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Others embraced the modern ways of their new rulers, seeking Muslim advancement through the pursuit of Western sciences, culture and law. From these movements two great Islamic institutions were born: Darul Uloom Deoband in northern India, rivaled only by Al Azhar University in Cairo for its teaching of Islam, and Aligarh Muslim University, a secular institution that promoted Muslim culture, philosophy and languages but left religion to the mosque. These two schools embody the fundamental split that continues to divide Islam in the subcontinent today. "You could say that Deoband and Aligarh are husband and wife, born from the same historical events," says Adil Siddiqui, information coordinator for Deoband. "But they live at daggers drawn."

The campus at Deoband is only a three-hour drive from New Delhi through the modern megasuburb of Noida. Strip malls and monster shopping complexes have consumed many of the mango groves that once framed the road to Deoband, but the contemporary world stops at the gate. The courtyards are packed with bearded young men wearing long, collared shirts and white caps. The air thrums with the voices of hundreds of students reciting the Koran from open-door classrooms.

Founded in 1866, the Deoband school quickly set itself apart from other traditional madrasahs, which were usually based in the home of the village mosque's prayer leader. Deoband's founders, a group of Muslim scholars from New Delhi, instituted a regimented system of classrooms, coursework, texts and exams. Instruction is in Urdu, Persian and Arabic, and the curriculum closely follows the teachings of the 18th century Indian Islamic scholar Mullah Nizamuddin Sehalvi. Graduates go on to study at Cairo's Al Azhar or the Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia, or they found their own Deobandi institutions.

Today, more than 9,000 Deobandi madrasahs are scattered throughout India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, most infamously the Dara-ul-Uloom Haqaniya Akora Khattak, near Peshawar, Pakistan, where Mullah Mohammed Omar and several other leaders of Afghanistan's Taliban first tasted a life lived in accordance with Shari'a. Siddiqui visibly stiffens when those names are brought up. They have become synonymous with Islamic radicalism, and Siddiqui is careful to dissociate his institution from those who carry on its traditions, without actually condemning their actions. "Our books are being taught there," he says. "They have the same system and rules. But if someone is following the path of terrorism, it is because of local compulsions and local politics."

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, who founded the Anglo-Mohammedan Oriental College at Aligarh in 1877, studied under the same teachers as the founders of Deoband. But he believed that the downfall of India's Muslims was due to their unwillingness to embrace modern ways. He decoupled religion from education and in his school sought to emulate the culture and training of India's new colonial masters. Islamic culture was part of the curriculum, but so were the latest advances in sciences, medicine and Western philosophy. The medium was English, the better to prepare students for civil-service jobs. He called his school the Oxford of the East. In architecture alone, the campus lives up to that name. A euphoric blend of clock towers, crenellated battlements, Mughal arches, domes and the staid red brick of Victorian institutions that only India's enthusiastic embrace of all things European could produce, the central campus of Aligarh today is haven to a diverse crowd of male and female, Hindu and Muslim students. Its law and medicine schools are among the top-ranked in India, but so are its arts faculty and Quranic Studies Centre. "With all this diversity, language, culture, secularism was the only way to go forward as a nation," says Aligarh's vice chancellor, P.K. Abdul Azis. "It was the new religion."

This fracture in religious doctrine — whether Islam should embrace the modern or revert to its fundamental origins — between two schools less than a day's donkey ride apart when they were founded, was barely remarked upon at the time. But over the course of the next 100 years, that tiny crack would split Islam into two warring ideologies with repercussions that reverberate around the world to this day. Before the split became a crisis, however, the founders of the Deoband and Aligarh universities shared the common goal of an independent India. Pedagogical leanings were overlooked as students and staff of both institutions joined with Hindus across the subcontinent to remove the yoke of colonial rule in the early decades of the 20th century.

Two Faiths, Two Nations
But nationalistic trends were pulling at the fragile alliance, and India began to splinter along ethnic and religious lines. Following World War I, a populist Muslim poet-philosopher by the name of Muhammad Iqbal framed the Islamic zeitgeist when he questioned the position of minority Muslims in a future, independent India. The solution, Iqbal proposed, was an independent state for Muslim-majority provinces in northwestern India, a separate country where Muslims would rule themselves. The idea of Pakistan was born.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the Savile Row–suited lawyer who midwifed Pakistan into existence on Aug. 14, 1947, was notoriously ambiguous about how he envisioned the country once it became an independent state. Both he and Iqbal, who were friends until the poet's death in 1938, had repeatedly stated their dream for a "modern, moderate and very enlightened Pakistan," says Sharifuddin Pirzada, Jinnah's personal secretary. Jinnah's own wish was that the Pakistani people, as members of a new, modern and democratic nation, would decide the country's direction.

But rarely in Pakistan's history have its people lived Jinnah's vision of a modern Muslim democracy. Only three times in its 62-year history has Pakistan seen a peaceful, democratic transition of power. With four disparate provinces, more than a dozen languages and dialects, and powerful neighbors, the country's leaders — be they Presidents, Prime Ministers or army chiefs — have been forced to knit the nation together with the only thing Pakistanis have in common: religion.

Following the 1971 civil war, when East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, broke away, the populist Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto embarked on a Muslim-identity program to prevent the country from fracturing further. General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq continued the Islamization campaign when he overthrew Bhutto in 1977, hoping to garner favor with the religious parties, the only constituency available to a military dictator. He instituted Shari'a courts, made blasphemy illegal and established laws that punished fornicators with lashes and held that rape victims could be convicted of adultery. When the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan in December 1979, Pakistan was already poised for its own Islamic revolution.

Almost overnight, thousands of refugees poured over the border into Pakistan. Camps mushroomed, and so did madrasahs. Ostensibly created to educate the refugees, they provided the ideal recruiting ground for a new breed of soldier: mujahedin, or holy warriors, trained to vanquish the infidel invaders in America's proxy war with the Soviet Union. Thousands of Pakistanis joined fellow Muslims from across the world to fight the Soviets. As far away as Karachi, high school kids started wearing "jihadi jackets," the pocketed vests popular with the mujahedin. Says Hamid Gul, then head of the Pakistan intelligence agency charged with arming and training the mujahedin: "In the 1980s, the world watched the people of Afghanistan stand up to tyranny, oppression and slavery. The spirit of jihad was rekindled, and it gave a new vision to the youth of Pakistan."

But jihad, as it is described in the Koran, does not end merely with political gain. It ends in a perfect Islamic state. The West's, and Pakistan's, cynical resurrection of something so profoundly powerful and complex unleashed a force that gave root to al-Qaeda's rage, the Taliban's dream of an Islamic utopia in Afghanistan, and in the dozens of radical Islamic groups rapidly replicating themselves in India and around the world today. "The promise of jihad was never fulfilled," says Gul. "Is it any wonder the fighting continues to this day?" Religion may have been used to unite Pakistan, but it is also tearing it apart.

India Today
In India, Islam is, in contrast, the other — purged by the British, denigrated by the Hindu right, mistrusted by the majority, marginalized by society. There are nearly as many Muslims in India as in all of Pakistan, but in a nation of more than a billion, they are still a minority, with all the burdens that minorities anywhere carry. Government surveys show that Muslims live shorter, poorer and unhealthier lives than Hindus and are often excluded from the better jobs. To be sure, there are Muslim success stories in the booming economy. Azim Premji, the founder of the outsourcing giant Wipro, is one of the richest individuals in India. But for many Muslims, the inequality of the boom has reinforced their exclusion.

Kashmir, a Muslim-dominated state whose fate had been left undecided in the chaos that led up to partition, remains a suppurating wound in India's Muslim psyche. As the cause of three wars between India and Pakistan — one of which nearly went nuclear in 1999 — Kashmir has become a symbol of profound injustice to Indian Muslims, who believe that their government cares little for Kashmir's claim of independence — which is based upon a 1948 U.N. resolution promising a plebiscite to determine the Kashmiri people's future. That frustration has spilled into the rest of India in the form of several devastating terrorist attacks that have made Indian Muslims both perpetrators and victims.

A mounting sense of persecution, fueled by the government's seeming reluctance to address the brutal anti-Muslim riots that killed more than 2,000 in the state of Gujarat in 2002, has aided the cause of homegrown militant groups. They include the banned Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which was accused of detonating nine bombs in Mumbai during the course of 2003, killing close to 80. The 2006 terrorist attacks on the Mumbai commuter-rail system that killed 183 people were also blamed on SIMI as well as the pro-Kashmir Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). Those incidents exposed the all-too-common Hindu belief that Muslims aren't really Indian. "LeT, SIMI — it doesn't matter who was behind these attacks. They are all children of [Pervez] Musharraf," sneered Manish Shah, a Mumbai resident who lost his best friend in the explosions, referring to the then President of Pakistan. In India, unlike Pakistan, Islam does not unify but divide.

Still, many South Asian Muslims insist Islam is the one and only force that can bring the subcontinent together and return it to pre-eminence as a single whole. "We [Muslims] were the legal rulers of India, and in 1857 the British took that away from us," says Tarik Jan, a gentle-mannered scholar at Islamabad's Institute of Policy Studies. "In 1947 they should have given that back to the Muslims." Jan is no militant, but he pines for the golden era of the Mughal period in the 1700s and has a fervent desire to see India, Pakistan and Bangladesh reunited under Islamic rule.

That sense of injustice is at the root of Muslim identity today. It has permeated every aspect of society and forms the basis of rising Islamic radicalism on the subcontinent. "People are hungry for justice," says Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist and author of the new book Descent into Chaos. "It is perceived to be the fundamental promise of the Koran." These twin phenomena — the longing many Muslims feel to see their religion restored as the subcontinent's core, and the marks of both piety and extremism Islam bears — reflect the lack of strong political and civic institutions in the region for people to have faith in. If the subcontinent's governments can't provide those institutions, then terrorists like the Trident's mysterious caller will continue asking questions. And providing their own answers.

— With reporting by Jyoti Thottam / Mumbai and Ershad Mahmud / Islamabad