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MUMBAI–The Indian police said for the first time yesterday that all of the Mumbai attackers came by ship from the Pakistani port of Karachi, offering the most specific evidence to date of a Pakistani link to the attacks.
The allegations, made by the chief of the Mumbai police in a televised news conference, came as Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee appeared to rule out an immediate military response against Pakistan, saying "no one is talking about military action."
But Mukherjee increased pressure on Islamabad, demanding the Pakistani government arrest and hand over about 20 people wanted for seven years under Indian law as criminal fugitives and who he said were still at large in Pakistan.
The request was the first known concrete demand made by India on Pakistan since the bloody rampage last week during which at least 173 people – including two Canadians – were killed. The fugitives, some of whom were suspected gangsters with links to organized crime, are not believed to be linked directly to the latest attacks in Mumbai, and the request for their handover – made by India before – may be a sign it is trying to take advantage of the atmosphere since the attacks to win new concessions.
As evidence of the militants' links to Pakistan mounted, Mumbai Police Commissioner Hasan Ghafoor said former Pakistani army officers trained the group – some for up to 18 months – and denied reports the men had been planning to escape the city.
"It appears that it was a suicide attack," Ghafoor said, providing no other details about when the gunmen left Karachi, or when they hijacked an Indian fishing trawler that carried them to Mumbai.
Ghafoor also confirmed the one gunman police had captured was from Pakistan.
He said the police were still verifying the nationalities of the nine other attackers, all of whom were killed during their rampage.
But he said there had been no British passport holders among them, contradicting earlier reports.
"The main plan was obvious – to create a sensation and to kill as many people as possible," he told reporters at a televised news conference, referring to the motivation behind the attacks on India's financial capital.
Responding to questions about whether the 10 gunmen had received assistance, he said 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.
Of greater concern for India was the apparent failure to act on multiple warnings ahead of the Mumbai attacks, which Indian navy chief Sureesh Mehta called "a systemic failure."
The Bush administration had warned India before the attacks that terrorists appeared to be plotting a mostly water-borne assault on Mumbai, Associated Press reported a senior administration official as saying.
India's foreign intelligence agency also had warnings as recently as September that Pakistan-based terrorists were plotting attacks on Mumbai, according to a government intelligence official familiar with the matter.
The information, intercepted from telephone conversations apparently coming out of Pakistan, indicated that hotels might be targeted but did not specify which ones, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The information was relayed to domestic security authorities, but it was unclear whether the government acted on the intelligence.
The Taj Mahal Palace hotel, scene of much of the bloodshed, had tightened security with metal detectors and other measures in the weeks before the attacks, after being warned of a possible threat.
But the precautions "could not have stopped what took place," Ratan Tata, chair of the company that owns the hotel, told CNN. The gunmen "didn't come through that entrance. They came from somewhere in the back."
India said evidence from the interrogation of the surviving attacker, Ajmal Qasab, pointed to militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was outlawed in 2002 in Pakistan under U.S. pressure.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was due to arrive in the region today to demand Pakistan's full co-operation with the investigation into the attacks and to calm relations.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has offered to establish a joint investigation with India and said the government wanted to continue a peace process begun in 2004 and broadened this year to include co-operation in fighting terrorism.
With files from Associated Press
