India Says All Mumbai Attackers Came by Ship

Metal detectors beeped and the word

MUMBAI, India — The Mumbai attackers came by ship from the Pakistani port of Karachi, the Indian police said Tuesday, the most direct link made to Pakistan so far.

With tensions high between Islamabad and New Delhi, the Mumbai police chief, Hassan Gafoor, gave some of the most specific details yet about the identity of the attackers and the nature of their the bloody rampage last week that left at least 173 people dead.

He repeated that the one gunman had captured alive was from Pakistan. That suspect has been identified as one Ajmal Amir Qasab, who Indian investigators said had admitted to being a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant Islamist group accused of carrying out terrorist attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir and elsewhere.

A police official in Mumbai said Mr. Qasab named several possible masterminds of the attack, including Yusuf Muzammil, who Indian authorities say is the Lashkar leader who spearheads actions on Indian soil.

Mr. Gafoor said the police were still verifying the nationalities of the nine attackers killed during their rampage. But he said there had been no British passport holders among them, contradicting some early news reports. The Indian authorities have maintained that the 10 accounts for all the attackers.

Mr. Gafoor said the 10 had been trained by an ex-army officer, although he refused to specify which army the officer belonged to, and that all been trained in the same location, some for as long as a year, although he would not say where.

“The main plan was obvious — to create a sensation and to kill as many people as possible,” he told reporters.

Responding to questions about whether the gunmen had received assistance, he said the evidence suggested they had no collaboration from employees at the two hotels they attacked in Mumbai, and there was as yet no evidence they had help elsewhere in the city.

Tensions between India and Pakistan are now at their worse since 2001, when a suicide attack on the Indian Parliament pushed them to the brink of war.

American and Indian intelligence officials say there is strong evidence tying the attacks to the Lashkar group, which has been linked to Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency. According to senior American government officials, satellite intercepts of telephone calls made during the siege directly linked the attackers in Mumbai to operatives in Pakistan working for Lashkar. The same group has been mentioned by some European security officials as linked to the attack. The American officials said there was still no evidence that Pakistan’s government had a hand in the operation.

Some new details have emerged about the difficulties faced by the Indian police commandos who responded to the killings here last week. The attackers used grenades to booby trap some of the bodies in the two luxury hotels where they struck, the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower and the Oberoi, so they would explode when they were moved, according to Rakesh Maria, the joint commissioner of the Mumbai police. It was not always clear, he added, whether the people were dead or just wounded.

That tactic made fighting the attackers more difficult, and significantly delayed the cleanup after the violence ended, Inspector Maria said. The last militants were routed on Saturday morning, but the Taj hotel was not returned to the control of its owners until Monday morning.

The foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, increased pressure on Pakistan, demanding that the Pakistani government arrest and hand over about 20 people wanted for seven years under Indian law as criminal fugitives. Some were suspected gangsters with links to organized crime; none were believed to be linked directly to the attacks.

Meanwhile, he appeared to rule out an immediate military response against Pakistan, saying that “no one is talking about military action,” according to news reports.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was due to arrive in the region on Wednesday to demand Pakistan’s full cooperation with the investigation into the attacks and to calm relations. In an attempt to tamp down tensions between India and Pakistan ahead of Ms. Rice’s arrival, President Bush ordered Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to travel to India.

Pakistan seemed eager to lower the levels of easily-ignited passion that, in the past, have brought the two nuclear-armed neighbors into three wars. The Pakistan foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, offered in a televised address to conduct a joint investigation with India into the Mumbai killings, Reuters reported, and said now was not the time for a “blame game.”

“Pakistan wants good relations with India,” he said.

President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan said in a television interview Monday night that if India shared the results of its investigation, Pakistan would “do everything in our power to go after these militants.”

Many of the fugitives sought by India were people it has been trying to arrest for years. They included Dawood Ibrahim, described in news reports as a powerful gangster and India’s most-wanted fugitive, who was accused of organizing bombings in Mumbai in 1993.

The list also included Masood Azhar, a suspected terrorist freed from prison in India in exchange for the release of hostages aboard a hijacked Indian Airlines aircraft in December, 1999, news reports said.

With elections just months away, the government needs to be seen as acting decisively in the face of the atrocities. But it could be accused of raising a red herring if it does not furnish convincing evidence for its claims of Pakistani involvement.

Indian intelligence officials issued at least one warning about a possible attack on the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, but that was in September. Security was increased for a while and then relaxed, intelligence officials have said. There were reports of many other unheeded warnings, but it was not clear how many were actually communicated.

Reporting was contributed by Jeremy Kahn, Somini Sengupta and Ruth Fremson in Mumbai; India, Jane Perlez in Islamabad, Pakistan; Mark Mazzetti, David E. Sanger in Washington; Alan Cowell in London; and Graham Bowley in New York.

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