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Gun Battles in Mumbai

Commandos Continue to Fight Militants

Indian security forces said that they had cleared one of the luxury hotels in Mumbai of gunmen on Friday, but there are still battles raging elsewhere in the city. Tensions are simmering between India and Pakistan over who was behind the deadly attack.

Fighting is still going on in Mumbai as security forces continue to battle with some of the militants who launched coordinated attacks across the city on Wednesday night. Indian commandos killed two militants in the luxury Trident-Oberoi hotel on Friday and rescued nearly 100 people.

Earlier on Friday masked commandos dropped from helicopters onto the roof of a Jewish center where militants were holed up. After a daylong siege the soldiers took control of the building, but unfortunately it was too late to save the hostages, all of whom were found dead. Meanwhile a fresh battle raged at the Taj Mahal Hotel on Friday evening.

After hours of intermittent gunfire and explosions, Indian forces began lobbing grenades at the hotel where at least one militant is holed up in the balllroom. There could be as many as six militants in the building. The head of the unit attempting to flush out any remaining gunmen there said the he had seen around 50 bodies in the hotel, including 12 to 15 in one room. The security forces found money, ammunition and an identity card from Mauritius that they suspected belonged to the terrorists. Lt. Gen. N. Thamburaj told reporters earlier on Friday that it would just be "a matter of a few hours," before things would be wrapped up.

Mumbai, a metropolis of 18 million and India's commercial and entertainment capital, was brought to halt on Wednesday evening after around 25 heavily armed men launched their co-ordinated attacks. The gunmen, some of whom arrived by sea, fanned out across the city and began to attack sites popular with Western tourists.

The shooters sprayed gunfire indiscriminately across the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station and then began attacking a total of 10 targets, including the Jewish ultra-orthodox Chad Lubavitch center, a restaurant, two hotels and hospitals. While according to some eyewitness reports, the militants seemed to have been targeting Americans, Britons and Israelis, most of the over 150 people that were killed are reported to have been Indian. The latest reports put the number of foreign victims at 22, of which two are American.

On Friday a commando unit stormed the Jewish center by dropping from helicopters while sharpshooters kept up a stream of fire at the building and soldiers fired smoke grenades into the building. Hundreds of onlookers, many with binoculars, crowded on roofs near the building to watch the dramatic assault.

After a daylong siege the two gunmen at the center were killed. The commandos then moved in to find five bodies of hostages, Indian and Israeli rescue officials said. It is thought that the victims were all Israeli and included a rabbi. An Israeli emergency medical team arrived at the scene and its volunteers set about gathering up any remains of the victims as Jewish law requires the burial of a dead person's entire body.

At the Oberoi Hotel hostages were being evacuated after the security forces regained control of the premises. Groups of captives, including around 20 airline crew members, were rushed out into waiting cars, buses and ambulances. Lufthansa confirmed that its seven crew members had been rescued. The group included one Western man dressed in a chef's uniform carrying a baby in his arms. Mark Abor, a British citizen who had locked himself in his room during the siege, heaped praise on the hotel staff. "These people have been fantastic," he told reporters.

Late on Thursday the authorities had claimed that the other hotel, the Taj Mahal, had been cleared of militants after around 400 people were evacuated. However, on Friday a security official announced that there was at least one gunman still in the building. Shortly afterwards gunfire and explosions could be heard coming from the hotel.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pinned blame for the attacks on the country's neighbors. Although not explicitly mentioned, it is assumed he was alluding to Pakistan. There are now concerns that the terrorist attack could provoke renewed tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals. On Friday Indian's External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said that "elements in Pakistan" were behind the chain of deadly attacks. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shaha Mehmood Qureshi pleaded with New Delhi not to "bring politics into this issue," saying the two countries should join hands to defeat a common enemy.

The gunmen's identity is still uncertain, with conflicting clues as to whether they could be Pakistani or home-grown militants. Early reports said that the attackers had spoken Hindi but there are also reports of them speaking Punjabi. A previously unknown Indian group calling itself Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the attacks in several e-mails.

Relations between Hindus, who make up more than 80 percent of India's population of 1 billion, and its sizeable Muslim minority have always been tense and the country has been plagued by sectarian violence and militant attacks for decades. In 2006 Mumbai was hit by series of bombings that killed 187 people.

Some analysts say that the Indian government will prefer to hint at a link to Pakistan rather than admit that the terrorists could be radicalized Indian Muslims. "It will always want to label this militancy as foreign rather than accept it has its own problem," Shaun Gregory, a South Asian terrorism expert with the University of Bradford, told the Associated Press. "That sells much more easily to the Indian public than admitting serious grievances within its Muslims."

smd -- with wire reports