Indian commandos mop up last of Mumbai militants

Commandos ended a three-day rampage by Islamist gunmen in Mumbai yesterday, gunning down the last of the militants who killed nearly 200 people in a strike on India's financial heart.

Elite Black Cat commandos killed the remaining four militants after a running gunbattle through a maze of corridors, rooms and halls in Mumbai's best-known hotel, the Taj Mahal.

There were signs of mounting public anger over the attacks - most of it directed against Pakistan, after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hinted that elements from India's nuclear-armed South Asian rival may have been involved.

"Our soldiers came and Pakistan ran away," shouted a group of about 50 protesters outside the Taj Mahal, pumping their fists skyward. One waved an Indian flag.

Commandos and rescue personnel were still cleaning up the wreckage near the still-smouldering hotel after the final battle inside.

The four militants were the last of 10 gunmen who attacked Mumbai's top two luxury hotels, its biggest railway station and several other symbols of India's financial might with grenades and assault rifles in a frenzy that began on Wednesday night.

Hundreds of people, many of them Westerners, were trapped or taken hostage. Twenty-two of those killed were foreigners.

Evidence mounted the men had come to Mumbai by sea from Karachi. "Investigation carried out so far has revealed the hand of Pakistan-based groups in the Mumbai attack," Sriprakash Jaiswal, India's minister of state for home affairs, told Reuters.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, battling Islamic radicals in his own nation, said he would co-operate.

"If any evidence comes of any individual or group in any part of my country, I shall take the swiftest of action in the light of evidence and in front of the world," he told CNN-IBN TV.

Many guests, trapped in their rooms in the Taj Mahal while the battle raged around them, emerged to harrowing scenes after the killing of the militants in relentless gunfire.

"The blood, everywhere the blood," an American woman called Patricia told the NDTV news channel, choking back tears.

The gunmen had set parts of the 105-year-old hotel ablaze as they evaded scores of India's best-trained commandos. They left bodies in their wake, some with grenades stuffed into their mouths or concealed underneath.

Black streaks of soot stained the grey bricks, white balconies and red-tiled roofs of the hotel's façade. The ground floor was gutted, the wood-panelled walls blackened and cracked by explosions and fire.

Wine glasses and soup bowls were scattered on the floor, a charred gilt chandelier broken in pieces on a carpet and shattered glass strewn throughout the Taj's boutique shops.

"At one time it was so magnificent. We were admiring it, sitting in the swing near the pool," Patricia said. "At one moment it was just serene and sensational, and the next, it was all gone."