A captured suspect in the Mumbai attacks has told police that he is Pakistani, Indian officials say. CNN's sister station, CNN-IBN, reports that the alleged terrorist said he was trained by Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, a Pakistan-based terror group that opposes India over the disputed Kashmir region.div class="feedflare" a href="http://rss.cnn.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?a=7msAuzBH"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://rss.cnn.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?a=c4wjvAxz"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?d=50" border="0"/img/a a href="http://rss.cnn.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?a=Y4jWjYU1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?i=Y4jWjYU1" border="0"/img/a a href="http://rss.cnn.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?a=gsCeQV8B"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://rss.cnn.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?a=U727mE5X"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/rss/cnn_topstories?i=U727mE5X" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/rss/cnn_topstories/~4/wcPDqMRnqag" height="1" width="1"/

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/81417?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Mumbai+terror+attacks%3A+Rice+calls+for+%27transparency%27+from+Pakistanch=World+newsc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Mumbai+terror+attacks+%28News%29%2CTerrorism+-+international%2CIndia+%28News%29%2CPakistan+%28News%29%2CUS+news%2CWorld+newsc5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Randeep+Ramesh%2CJason+Burke%2CPeter+Walkerc7=2008_12_01c8=1126818c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Mumbai+terror+attacksc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FMumbai+terror+attacks" width="1" height="1" //divpThe US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, today called for "total transparency" from Pakistan over the Mumbai terror attacks as an angry India blamed its neighbour for the mass killings./pp"I don't want to jump to any conclusions myself on this, but I do think that this is a time for complete, absolute, total transparency and cooperation and that is what we expect [from Pakistan]," Rice told reporters travelling with her to London, Reuters reported./ppRice was scheduled to meet David Miliband, the foreign secretary, later today in London before travelling to India on Wednesday./ppThe US and UK have been urging restraint as India's government said it had raised security to a "war level" and had obtained definite proof of a Pakistani link to the killings./ppSri Prakash Jaiswal, India's minister of state for home affairs, said last night that the country's "intelligence will be increased to a war level, we are asking the state governments to increase security to a war level". The Press Trust of India, India's official news agency, also reported that the government was considering suspending the four-year-old peace process with its neighbour./ppJaiswal said there was "no doubt that the terrorists had come from Pakistan ... We have evidence of their nationalities. We will reveal everything soon"./ppA police officer involved in the interrogation of the only attacker captured alive by Indian commandos, named as Ajmal Amir Kasab, a 21-year-old Pakistani, told Reuters the militants had spent months in Pakistan having military-style training. It is believed 10 militants carried out the assault./ppIndia's actions prompted Pakistan to say it would end military operations against Islamist militants on the Afghan border, which are critical to the hunt for al-Qaida-linked militants, due to the "unwanted conflict" with Delhi./ppPakistan's government has condemned the Mumbai assault as a "barbaric act of terrorism" and denied involvement by any "state institutions". But the group named by India, Lashkar-e-Taiba, has longstanding relationships with Pakistan's security establishment./ppIn an interview published this morning, Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, appealed to India not to punish his country, warning that "non-state actors" could provoke the nuclear-armed neighbours into conflict./pp"Even if the militants are linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, who do you think we are fighting?" he told the Financial Times./ppAs many schools and shops opened this morning for the first time since the attacks on Wednesday evening, state government officials said the final siege site to be cleared, the Taj Mahal hotel, had now been completely checked. The death toll has now been put at 172, including 19 foreigners. One Briton was among the dead./pp"We were apprehensive about more bodies being found. But this is not likely. All rooms in the Taj have been opened and checked," said a spokesman for Maharashtra's state government./ppIn India, the government is struggling to contain public anger over the attacks with demonstrators taking to the streets to vent their anger over the inability to stop the killings./ppThe chief minister of Maharashtra state, Vilasrao Deshmukh, said today he had offered to resign. India's home minister, Shivraj Patil, stepped down yesterday./ppIndia's ruling Congress party, which faces a general election next year, has been attacked by opponents for being soft on terrorism, a potent charge given that India has suffered a major attack every month this year. The government said last night it would urgently upgrade maritime and air security and look to create a federal investigative agency./ppThe peace process between India and Pakistan now appears in doubt. "There is a view in the government that India should suspend the peace process ... to show that it is not going to take lightly the deadly carnage in Mumbai," the Press Trust of India reported. It quoted sources as saying the government, "including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is very upset as it feels that Pakistan has not kept its promise made at the highest level to end terrorism directed at India"./ppLashkar-e-Taiba, which is fighting Indian control of the disputed Kashmir region, was behind a deadly 2001 assault on the Indian parliament that pushed New Delhi and Islamabad to the brink of war./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/mumbai-terror-attacks"Mumbai terror attacks/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/terrorism"Global terrorism/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/india"India/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/pakistan"Pakistan/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/07ZvwR_Ib-VMeUVUjIuth1us1O4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/07ZvwR_Ib-VMeUVUjIuth1us1O4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

situé au coeur du Vieux Port de Montréal et est reconnu pour son décor, son excellent service et sa remarquable cuisine. Spécialisé en cuisine indienne.br / br / Avec ses hautes fenêtres encastrées dans les épais murs de pierres, le restaurant Kashmir offre une vue magnifique sur le Vieux-Montréal. Les planchers de bois ainsi que les murs de pierres et de briques rappellent une autre époque,

situé au coeur du Vieux Port de Montréal et est reconnu pour son décor, son excellent service et sa remarquable cuisine. Spécialisé en cuisine.br / br / Avec ses hautes fenêtres encastrées dans les épais murs de pierres, le restaurant Kashmir offre une vue magnifique sur le Vieux-Montréal. Les planchers de bois ainsi que les murs de pierres et de briques rappellent une autre époque,

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/16756?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Pakistan+warns+west%3A+we+cannot+fight+al-Qaida+if+crisis+escalatesch=World+newsc3=The+Guardianc4=Pakistan+%28News%29%2CIndia+%28News%29%2CAl-Qaida+%28News%29%2CTerrorism+-+international%2CAfghanistan+%28News%29%2CWorld+newsc5=Not+commercially+usefulc6=Jason+Burkec7=2008_12_01c8=1126658c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Pakistanc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FPakistan" width="1" height="1" //divpSenior Pakistani intelligence officials have threatened to end military operations against Islamist militants along the country's Afghan border if India deploys troops on their eastern frontier./ppIn a rare briefing to senior local journalists, intelligence officials said the coming days would be "crucial" and threatened to pull out all the troops committed to the "war on terror" in the event of "an unwanted conflict" with India. "We will not leave a single troop on the western [Afghan] border if we are threatened by India," an official was reported as saying./ppPakistan currently has more than 100,000 soldiers engaged in operations in the semi-autonomous tribal zones where senior international militants connected to al-Qaida, local extremists and a significant proportion of the Taliban's leadership are thought to be based./ppThe Pakistani operations, largely funded by the United States, are seen by Nato commanders as vital to keep open supply lines to their troops in Afghanistan and to block, or at least hinder, movement by militants across the porous Afghan-Pakistan frontier./pp"These statements are aimed at sending a clear message to the US to intervene to defuse the situation, and that if India wants to use these tragic events as a pretext for a border conflict then that will not be tolerated," said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, professor of political science at Lahore University of Management Sciences./pp"They are saying that if Pakistan has to choose between fighting India and fighting the militants, then it will fight India."/ppThere are fears of a breakdown of the recent peace process between the nuclear-capable countries. After a bloody attack on India's parliament by militants linked by New Delhi to Pakistan in 2001, troops faced off across the Indian-Pakistan border throughout most of the following year with fierce artillery duels across the shared border of Kashmir./ppWashington, concerned about the distraction from efforts to contain Islamist extremism in the region, brokered a peace deal and encouraged a subsequent thaw. The two countries have fought three wars since achieving independence./ppPakistan's government condemned the Mumbai assault as a "barbaric act of terrorism" and denied any involvement by any state institutions. /ppBut the groups that have been named by India as having some responsibility for the attacks, the Pakistan-based /ppLashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, both have longstanding relationships with Pakistan's security establishment./ppIslamabad has also been forced to backtrack on a promise to send the chief of its main intelligence service, the military Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) to India to help with the investigation./ppConfusion over the dispatch of Lieutenant General Shuja Pasha to India, announced by Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani last week, has revealed the tension between the military establishment and the civilian government in Pakistan, local analysts say./ppA lower ranked official will now travel instead. The mix-up has been blamed on "miscommunication" by Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari./pp"The very fact that they wanted to send the head of the ISI shows how much the [civilian government] want to cooperate," said Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington and Brussels./pp"But the decision was taken without due recognition of the ground reality in Pakistan, that is to say without consultation with the military and other political players."/ppMohammad Sadiq, a spokesman for the Pakistani government, dismissed reports of tensions as "humbug". "Everything is very much in sync," he said./ppPakistan is making efforts to rally international diplomatic support. Yesterday its foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi spoke by telephone to his counterparts in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates as well as to the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, Sadiq said. Pakistani analysts and commentators have insisted that India has been too hasty to blame Islamabad for the attacks. Many in Pakistan believe that New Delhi is using Pakistan as a scapegoat and are calling for an independent international commission of inquiry./pp"There was a massive intelligence failure on the part of India," said Rais. "The Pakistani government does not want another conflict. They have two insurgencies to deal with and enough other problems already."/ppPakistan's long history of using militants to further foreign policy objectives, initially against Soviet forces occupying Afghanistan in the 1980s and then subsequently in Kashmir, means their current claims of innocence are greeted with scepticism./ppIn recent years Pakistan has tried to rein in groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, prime suspects for the Mumbai attack, or Jaish-e-Muhammad, blamed for the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament, but it is unclear how much effort has been made to control the extremists, nor if those efforts have been successful./ppA Pakistani official yesterday suggested that one possibility was a "rogue" militant group, pointing out that the ISI itself had been bombed recently by extremists./ph2'State within a state'/h2pPakistan's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was founded in 1948 by a strongBritish army officer/strong seconded to the fledgling country's military forces after independence. The agency became known for involvement in domestic politics, a trend accelerated by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, father of Benazir Bhutto, who set up a strongpolitical wing/strong. In the 90s, the ISI set up or encouraged a number of jihadi groups as irregular proxies fighting Indian troops in Kashmir. Recent efforts to dismantle or downgrade these groups have proved ineffective, with Pakistan itself suffering regular bombings. The ISI also aided the Taliban in the 90s and is alleged to have contacts with Afghan insurgents. Though frequently called a strong"state within a state",/strong retired and serving officers insist the ISI is fully integrated into the military chain of command. It is staffed by regular army officers as well as some contractors and civilians, and is the means by which Pakistan's military strongprojects its power/strong internally and overseas./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/pakistan"Pakistan/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/india"India/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/alqaida"Al-Qaida/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/terrorism"Global terrorism/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/afghanistan"Afghanistan/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/04CkOSrr4FRrg5N_XgeLn9QdlNs/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/04CkOSrr4FRrg5N_XgeLn9QdlNs/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/83377?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+At+war+level%3A+India+raises+security+status+amid+griefch=World+newsc3=The+Guardianc4=Mumbai+terror+attacks+%28News%29%2CTerrorism+-+international%2CIndia+%28News%29%2CPakistan+%28News%29%2CWorld+newsc5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Randeep+Ramesh%2CJason+Burkec7=2008_12_01c8=1126687c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Mumbai+terror+attacksc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FMumbai+terror+attacks" width="1" height="1" //divpThe Indian government raised the country's security to a "war level" yesterday saying it had certain proof of a Pakistani link to the Mumbai attacks./ppThe dramatic move prompted Pakistan to say it would end military operations against Islamist militants on the Afghan border, which are critical to the "war on terror", for an "unwanted conflict" with Delhi./ppWith bodies being pulled from the Taj Mahal hotel, where gunmen had made their last stand after a rampage that left more than 170 dead, Sri Prakash Jaiswal, India's minister of state for home affairs, said the country's "intelligence will be increased to a war level, we are asking the state governments to increase security to a war level". The Press Trust of India, India's official news agency also reported that the government was considering suspending the four-year-old peace process with its neighbour./ppPakistan's government has condemned the Mumbai assault as a "barbaric act of terrorism" and denied involvement by any "state institutions". But the group named by India, Lashkar-e-Taiba, has longstanding relationships with Pakistan's security establishment. /ppThe US and UK have been urging restraint since the Mumbai terror attacks and escalating tensions on the subcontinent are likely to top the agenda when Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, meets David Miliband, the foreign secretary, today in London./ppThe Indian minister said yesterday there was "no doubt that the terrorists had come from Pakistan ... We have evidence of their nationalities. We will reveal everything soon"./ppIndian police say they have in custody one of the gunmen, a 21-year-old Pakistani, Ajmal Amir Kasab, and detailed accounts of an alleged confession given by him have been played out in the Indian media. Authorities have also recovered a satellite phone that appears to corroborate much of his testimony./ppA fresh confrontation between India and Pakistan would jeopardise attempts by western powers to persuade Pakistan to take on militants linked to the Taliban and al- Qaida in its tribal regions bordering Afghanistan, rather than pitting its forces against India. Pakistani defence sources said nearly 100,000 troops deployed on the western frontier with Afghanistan could be pulled back to deal with a more immediate threat. /ppIn India the government is struggling to contain public anger over the attacks with demonstrators taking to the streets to vent their anger over the inability to stop the killings. The wave violence unleashed claimed its first political casualty yesterday when India's home minister, Shivraj Patil, resigned as the government struggled under growing accusations of security failures. /ppIndia's ruling Congress party, which faces a general election next year, has been attacked by opponents for being soft on terrorism, a potent charge given that India has suffered a major attack every month this year. The government said last night it would be urgently upgrading maritime and air security and looking to create a federal investigative agency./ppThe peace process between India and Pakistan now appears in doubt. "There is a view in the government that India should suspend the peace process ... to show that it is not going to take lightly the deadly carnage in Mumbai," the Press Trust of India reported. It quoted sources as saying the government, "including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is very upset as it feels that Pakistan has not kept its promise made at the highest level to end terrorism directed at India"./ppLashkar-e-Taiba, which is fighting Indian control of the disputed Kashmir region, was behind a deadly 2001 assault on the Indian parliament that pushed New Delhi and Islamabad to the brink of war. /ppIt is believed at least 10 militants carried out the assault on Mumbai. Among the dead were 18 foreigners, including six Americans and a Briton./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/mumbai-terror-attacks"Mumbai terror attacks/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/terrorism"Global terrorism/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/india"India/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/pakistan"Pakistan/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/DC-klSKeh1_nZ9pgx18SpGkS_Hw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/DC-klSKeh1_nZ9pgx18SpGkS_Hw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/76345?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Mumbai+terror+attacks%3A+Senior+Indian+officials+resign+amid+criticism+over+siegech=World+newsc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Mumbai+terror+attacks+%28News%29%2CIndia+%28News%29%2CPakistan+%28News%29%2CTerrorism+-+international%2CWorld+newsc5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Vikram+Dodd%2CRandeep+Ramesh%2CPeter+Beaumont%2CJason+Burkec7=2008_11_30c8=1126518c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Mumbai+terror+attacksc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FMumbai+terror+attacks" width="1" height="1" //divpIndia's national security adviser resigned today in response to the deadly attacks in Mumbai, local television channels said. /ppNews of M K Narayanan's offer to quit came hours after India's ruling Congress party announced that home minister Shivraj Patil had resigned./ppThere has been a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/30/terrorism-attacks-mumbai"criticism of politicians/a and the security services for the failure to confront the threat of terrorism, which has manifested itself in a number of attacks in recent years in Mumbai and elsewhere in India./ppTensions between India and Pakistan escalated last night after it was claimed that the only terrorist to have survived three days of deadly battles in Mumbai was from Pakistan, and that his nine fellow Islamist militants were either from that country or had been trained there./ppThe claims about responsibility for the attack, in which almost 200 people were killed, came from leaked police accounts that gave details of the interrogation of Azam Amir Kasab, 21, said to have been the man pictured at Mumbai's main train station carrying an assault rifle and grenades./ppAccording to the reports, which could not be independently verified, Kasab said that the operation was the responsibility of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a jihadist group based in Pakistan, and its aim was to 'kill as many as possible' in what was intended to be India's 9/11. The claims were made as Indian special forces ended the violent sieges around Mumbai with the killing of the final three terrorists holding out in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel - where British survivors had walked through rooms strewn with bodies and 'blood and guts' as they were led to safety./ppThe allegations about Pakistan emerged as India was confronted with the full horror of the past few days. Reporters were allowed into the wrecked and scorched remains of the Taj Mahal and Trident-Oberoi hotels, where scores of victims had been murdered./ppPublic anger in India has been mounting following allegations linking Pakistan to the attacks. They include:/pp· Kasab's claim that militants were trained in two camps run by Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan./pp· Allegations that phones found on a trawler suspected of ferrying the gunmen to Mumbai had been used to contact Pakistan./pp· The claim by India's minister of state for home affairs, Sri Prakash Jaiswal, that 'the investigation carried out so far has revealed the hand of Pakistan-based groups in the Mumbai attack'./ppIn response to the claim that the attackers were either Pakistanis or had been trained there, a senior Pakistani official said troops would be sent to the border if tensions continued to rise./ppHowever, despite initial claims, it became increasingly certain that there was no involvement of British-based fundamentalists. Police forces across the UK denied they were investigating named individuals and Gordon Brown said there was no evidence linking any of the terrorist to the UK./ppThe escalating war of words between India and Pakistan has set alarm bells ringing in the United States, where President Bush convened an emergency meeting with senior security officials. President-elect Barack Obama, who has said that reconciliation between the nuclear-armed neighbours is essential to stabilise Afghanistan and defeat al-Qaeda, called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday night to offer condolences./ppThe cold-blooded intent of the militants has shaken India. Officials said just 10 gunmen, with enough arms and ammunition 'to kill 5,000 people', had attacked the Taj, the Trident-Oberoi, the main railway station, a popular restaurant and a cinema. In the siege of a Jewish centre, which was retaken by security forces on Friday night, the militants had bound and shot five people, including a rabbi and his wife, before they were killed./ppA handful of gunmen held out for almost three days, taking hundreds of people hostage, many of them Westerners. Twenty-two of those killed were foreigners. Last night emergency services raised the prospect that many - including three Britons - were still missing from the Taj./ppThe gunmen set the 105-year-old hotel ablaze as they evaded scores of India's best-trained commandos. They left bodies with grenades stuffed into their mouths./ppThe photograph of a baby-faced militant, whom newspaper reports claim is Kasab, wearing combat trousers and swinging an AK47 in Mumbai's main railway station, is the defining image of the rampage. His victims are said to include Mumbai's anti-terror squad chief Hemant Karkare, whose body was cremated yesterday./ppUnder questioning, Kasab is said to have admitted to being a resident of Faridkot in Pakistan's Punjab province. 'I was trained by Lashkar-e-Taiba and asked to cause maximum casualties in Mumbai,' he is alleged to have said, referring to an organisation which India says is sending armed militants into Kashmir. Kasab was arrested on Wednesday night after his partner, said to be Ismail Khan, was shot dead./ppThe duo's night began when they fired on commuters in the railway station and in two hospitals. Kasab told police that they had learnt about Mumbai's geography using Google Earth./ppAccording to Indian media reports, the captured militant said that a room booked in the Taj had been used to store explosives and ammunition ahead of the attacks. This might explain how the squads of gunmen were able to reload their weapons over more than 50 hours and appeared to have an inexhaustible supply of grenades./ppAsif Ali Zardari, the President of Pakistan, yesterday appeared on Indian television in an attempt to defuse tensions. 'As President of Pakistan, if any evidence comes of any individual or group in any part of my country, I shall take the swiftest action in the light of evidence and in front of the world,' he said./ppAnalysts said that the omens did not look good for the peace process between India and Pakistan. 'I expect a very difficult time ahead,' said Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington. 'Anything short of a real and genuine effort to co-operate by Pakistan would send very, very bad signals - not just to India but to the US and to Europe too.'/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/mumbai-terror-attacks"Mumbai terror attacks/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/india"India/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/pakistan"Pakistan/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/terrorism"Global terrorism/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/eTAImYTrNngRSJ3PixXi_LCd6FE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/eTAImYTrNngRSJ3PixXi_LCd6FE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Suketu Mehta, author of the Pulitzer-nominated "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found" has a wracked and impassioned op-ed in today's New York Times about the Mumbai attacks. Mehta says that the terrorists want to kill the golden dream of Mumbai, and pledges himself to improving the city and its injustices, calling on all of us to renew our commitment to one of the largest, most beautiful, most maddening cities in the world. I spent some time in Mumbai in September, and met some of the warmest, cleverest, most driven people I've ever encountered, from the slums of Dharavi to the IT parks to the Bollywood studios, it was a bottomless well of ambitious strivers who loved their city and worked and played around the clock. The poverty was crushing, the bravery inspiring, the city beautiful and terrible at once. Like most foreigners who visit the city, I stayed in the tourist quarter in Colaba, where many of the attacks occurred -- I had dinner at Leopold's, tea at the Taj, tried to get a train at VT. I hope that all my Mumbai friends are safe and sound. I've been avidly reading the traffic on one of the Indian mailing-lists I lurk on, watching as the Mumbai residents check in, trade stories, give thanks for being alive and, like Mehta, pledge to answer the problems of their city with love instead of hate. In the Bombay I grew up in, your religion was a personal eccentricity, like a hairstyle. In my school, you were denominated by which cricketer or Bollywood star you worshiped, not which prophet. In today’s Mumbai, things have changed. Hindu and Muslim demagogues want the mobs to come out again in the streets, and slaughter one another in the name of God. They want India and Pakistan to go to war. They want Indian Muslims to be expelled. They want India to get out of Kashmir. They want mosques torn down. They want temples bombed. And now it looks as if the latest terrorists were our neighbors, young men dressed not in Afghan tunics but in blue jeans and designer T-shirts. Being South Asian, they would have grown up watching the painted lady that is Mumbai in the movies: a city of flashy cars and flashier women. A pleasure-loving city, a sensual city. Everything that preachers of every religion thunder against. It is, as a monk of the pacifist Jain religion explained to me, “paap-ni-bhoomi”: the sinful land... But the best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever. Dream of making a good home for all Mumbaikars, not just the denizens of $500-a-night hotel rooms. Dream not just of Bollywood stars like Aishwarya Rai or Shah Rukh Khan, but of clean running water, humane mass transit, better toilets, a responsive government. Make a killing not in God’s name but in the stock market, and then turn up the forbidden music and dance; work hard and party harder. What They Hate About Mumbai (via Jon Taplin) Previously: India: Mumbai Attacks, Day Two; tech speculation - Boing Boing Blasts kill hundreds in Mumbai: local bloggers react - Boing Boing Maximum City: exhausting and beautiful love-note to Mumbai - Boing ......br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=camp;i=092f52482530c3c1e4d885416507a552amp;p=1"img style="border:0;" src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=vamp;i=092f52482530c3c1e4d885416507a552amp;p=1" border="0" //a

William Dalrymple: India's poor human rights record in the state has spawned a new brand of terrorist - well-educated and middle-class pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/8GlL4KIZH3WUYlWWLZZPK28i8Kw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/8GlL4KIZH3WUYlWWLZZPK28i8Kw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/77091?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Mumbai+terror+attacks%3A+India+fury+at+Pakistan+as+bloody+siege+is+crushedch=World+newsc3=The+Observerc4=Mumbai+terror+attacks+%28News%29%2CIndia+%28News%29%2CPakistan+%28News%29%2CTerrorism+-+international%2CWorld+news%2CObserverc5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Randeep+Ramesh%2CVikram+Dodd%2CJason+Burke%2CPeter+Beaumontc7=2008_11_30c8=1126501c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Mumbai+terror+attacksc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FMumbai+terror+attacks" width="1" height="1" //divpTensions between India and Pakistan escalated last night after it was claimed that the only terrorist to have survived three days of deadly battles in Mumbai was from Pakistan, and that his nine fellow Islamist militants were either from that country or had been trained there./ppThe claims about responsibility for the attack, in which almost 200 people were killed, came from leaked police accounts that gave details of the interrogation of Azam Amir Kasab, 21, said to have been the man pictured at Mumbai's main train station carrying an assault rifle and grenades./ppAccording to the reports, which could not be independently verified, Kasab said that the operation was the responsibility of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a jihadist group based in Pakistan, and its aim was to 'kill as many as possible' in what was intended to be India's 9/11. The claims were made as Indian special forces ended the violent sieges around Mumbai with the killing of the final three terrorists holding out in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel - where British survivors had walked through rooms strewn with bodies and 'blood and guts' as they were led to safety. /ppThe allegations about Pakistan emerged as India was confronted with the full horror of the past few days. Reporters were allowed into the wrecked and scorched remains of the Taj Mahal and Trident-Oberoi hotels, where scores of victims had been murdered. /ppPublic anger in India has been mounting following allegations linking Pakistan to the attacks. They include:/pp· Kasab's claim that militants were trained in two camps run by Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan./pp· Allegations that phones found on a trawler suspected of ferrying the gunmen to Mumbai had been used to contact Pakistan./pp· The claim by India's minister of state for home affairs, Sri Prakash Jaiswal, that 'the investigation carried out so far has revealed the hand of Pakistan-based groups in the Mumbai attack'. /ppIn response to the claim that the attackers were either Pakistanis or had been trained there, a senior Pakistani official said troops would be sent to the border if tensions continued to rise./ppHowever, despite initial claims, it became increasingly certain that there was no involvement of British-based fundamentalists. Police forces across the UK denied they were investigating named individuals and Gordon Brown said there was no evidence linking any of the terrorist to the UK./ppThe escalating war of words between India and Pakistan has set alarm bells ringing in the United States, where President Bush convened an emergency meeting with senior security officials. President-elect Barack Obama, who has said that reconciliation between the nuclear-armed neighbours is essential to stabilise Afghanistan and defeat al-Qaeda, called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday night to offer condolences./ppThe cold-blooded intent of the militants has shaken India. Officials said just 10 gunmen, with enough arms and ammunition 'to kill 5,000 people', had attacked the Taj, the Trident-Oberoi, the main railway station, a popular restaurant and a cinema. In the siege of a Jewish centre, which was retaken by security forces on Friday night, the militants had bound and shot five people, including a rabbi and his wife, before they were killed./ppA handful of gunmen held out for almost three days, taking hundreds of people hostage, many of them Westerners. Twenty-two of those killed were foreigners. Last night emergency services raised the prospect that many - including three Britons - were still missing from the Taj./ppThe gunmen set the 105-year-old hotel ablaze as they evaded scores of India's best-trained commandos. They left bodies with grenades stuffed into their mouths./ppThe photograph of a baby-faced militant, whom newspaper reports claim is Kasab, wearing combat trousers and swinging an AK47 in Mumbai's main railway station, is the defining image of the rampage. His victims are said to include Mumbai's anti-terror squad chief Hemant Karkare, whose body was cremated yesterday./ppUnder questioning, Kasab is said to have admitted to being a resident of Faridkot in Pakistan's Punjab province. 'I was trained by Lashkar-e-Taiba and asked to cause maximum casualties in Mumbai,' he is alleged to have said, referring to an organisation which India says is sending armed militants into Kashmir. Kasab was arrested on Wednesday night after his partner, said to be Ismail Khan, was shot dead. /ppThe duo's night began when they fired on commuters in the railway station and in two hospitals. Kasab told police that they had learnt about Mumbai's geography using Google Earth./ppAccording to Indian media reports, the captured militant said that a room booked in the Taj had been used to store explosives and ammunition ahead of the attacks. This might explain how the squads of gunmen were able to reload their weapons over more than 50 hours and appeared to have an inexhaustible supply of grenades./ppAsif Ali Zardari, the President of Pakistan, yesterday appeared on Indian television in an attempt to defuse tensions. 'As President of Pakistan, if any evidence comes of any individual or group in any part of my country, I shall take the swiftest action in the light of evidence and in front of the world,' he said./ppAnalysts said that the omens did not look good for the peace process between India and Pakistan. 'I expect a very difficult time ahead,' said Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington. 'Anything short of a real and genuine effort to co-operate by Pakistan would send very, very bad signals - not just to India but to the US and to Europe too.'/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/mumbai-terror-attacks"Mumbai terror attacks/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/india"India/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/pakistan"Pakistan/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/terrorism"Global terrorism/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/ZpUVVtj4TKJUuWBnSWD5xWBLC0w/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/ZpUVVtj4TKJUuWBnSWD5xWBLC0w/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/25095?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Mumbai%3A+Behind+the+attacks+lies+a+story+of+youth+twisted+by+hatech=World+newsc3=The+Observerc4=Mumbai+terror+attacks+%28News%29%2CIndia+%28News%29%2CTerrorism+-+international%2CWorld+news%2CObserverc5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Jason+Burkec7=2008_11_30c8=1126474c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Mumbai+terror+attacksc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FMumbai+terror+attacks" width="1" height="1" //divpThe pitted roads around Multan, the city of saints, stretch flat across the fields. They lead past rundown factories, workshops, shabby roadside teashops and mile after mile of flat fields broken only by the mud and brick houses of the villages of Pakistan's rural poor. One road leads south-east to the nearby city of Bahawalpur, the biggest recruiting base of the militant groups currently being blamed by India for the Mumbai attack; another leads north-west to Faridkot, the home village of Mohammad Ajmal Mohammad Amin Kasab, a 21-year-old Pakistan national named yesterday in the Indian media as the only gunman involved in last week's atrocity now alive and in custody./ppAlready a picture claimed by the Indian media to be Kasab, showing a young man dressed in combat trousers, carrying a backpack and an AK47, on his way to to Mumbai's main station to carry out his deadly work, has become an iconic image of the assault on the city./ppTwo other militants have been named. Like Kasab, according to the Indian media reports, they are said to be from the Multan region, southern Punjab. They, too, are said to be members of the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) and to have followed a five-month training period to prepare them for the attack. The charge of the group's involvement, denied by its spokesmen, has explosive political consequences for the volatile region and must be treated with caution. In the long-running contest between India and its neighbour, propaganda and misinformation is far from rare. But if the details now emerging are confirmed, the link to Pakistan may spark war./ppFor though it is widely acknowledged that Pakistan's civilian government has limited control over local militant groups, it is clear that Pakistan's military and security establishment does./ppLashkar-e-Taiba was originally founded with the support of the Pakistani military intelligence service, the ISI, to fight as 'deniable' proxies in the contested territory of Kashmir, part of a decades-old strategy by the militarily weaker Pakistan to 'bleed' its bigger rival. The ISI also has connections with Jaish-e-Mohammed, the second group that New Delhi security officials has accused of involvement in the Mumbai attacks./ppFor the moment little is known about the three men named yesterday or their accomplices. But their place of origin comes as no surprise to experts. Both Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed draw the majority of their recruits from the southern Punjab. Last week The Observer travelled to the twin towns of Multan and Bahawalpur, the centres of the region, to investigate the reality of the groups' power on the ground, their relations with the Pakistani intelligence services and the factors which drive young men, possibly including the Mumbai gunmen, to join them./ppTrace a line from where US special forces battle Taliban fighters in the corner of empty desert where the Afghan, Pakistani and Iranian frontiers meet, follow it through the badlands of the Pakistani North West Frontier and on through the bomb-blasted cities of northern Pakistan and down through Delhi, attacked in September, to shell-shocked Mumbai, and one thing becomes clear: this zone has displaced the Middle East as the new central front in the struggle against Islamic militancy. The southern Punjab falls on the line's centre point. There may be doubt over the identity of the attackers, but there is none that Multan and Bahawalpur and villages such as Faridkot are in the Indians' sights./ppFor most militants in the region the story - and that of Azam Amir Kasab is unlikely to be very different - starts at school. The southern Punjab has one of the highest concentrations of religious schools or madrassas in south Asia. Most teach the ultra-conservative Deobandi strand of Islam that is also followed by the Afghan Taliban and, crucially in this desperately poor land, offers free classes, board and lodging to students./ppIn Bahawalpur the Jaish-e-Mohammed group, believed responsible for a string of brutal attacks across south Asia, including the murder of Jewish American journalist Daniel Pearl, has been linked to two such madrassas. One is the headquarters of the group - a semi-fortified and forbidding complex in the centre of the town. The other is the Dar-ul-Uloom Medina, where the brother-in-law of Rashid Rauf, the Bahawalpur-based suspected British militant thought to have been killed in an American missile attack eight days ago, is a teacher. Surrounded by some of the 700 students, he told The Observer that 'jihad' was the duty of all his young charges./ppThe pupils at the more radical Bahawalpur and Multan schools grow up soaked in extremist ideology. The most senior cleric in Bahawalpur, Maulana Riaz Chugti, said his students could only go 'for training or to fight' after their studies or when the schools were shut for the holy month of Ramadan./pp'To fight in Afghanistan or Kashmir and to struggle against the forces who are against Islam is our religious duty,' Chugti, who oversees the education of 40,000 students, told The Observer./ppIn Bahawalpur both the effects and the limits of the recent reversal of policy by the ISI, the powerful Pakistani military intelligence service, are evident. A crackdown on the militant groups was launched after they were blamed for a bloody attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 which almost brought India and Pakistan to open war. The groups, previously seen as a strategic asset, were suddenly seen as, at least for the moment, a liability. When their operatives were linked to plots to assassinate the then President, and evidence of collusion with al-Qaeda itself became clear, the pressure mounted on the ISI to rein in their former proteacute;geacute;s./pp'The militants have had to lower their profile,' said one local security official. 'They are no longer recruiting or preaching or raising funds openly. Things are much more difficult for them. If they recruit at all they do it individual by individual, not en masse like before. There is no production line.'/ppBut the groups - along with break-away outfits with their roots in sectarian Shia-Sunni violence in the region - still have a significant presence in the region, particularly in remote villages such as that of Azam Amir Kasab. 'They may be semi-retired, but in my village there are 300 men who have fought in Afghanistan and have training and can be activated with one phone call,' one local former militant said. That fighters for one operation should come from the same place was not surprising. 'When I went to Afghanistan I went with five guys who I knew from school,' he said./ppThe young men of the southern Punjab have been found across a broad swath of south Asia and even further afield. In Kabul in August, The Observer interviewed Abit, a 23-year-old from Bahawalpur who had surrendered to Afghan police seconds before he was supposed to blow himself up in a huge truck bomb. Other militants from the town have been found as far away as Bangladesh. Lashkar-e-Taiba members have even been located in Iraq./ppThe groups are also of great interest to British intelligence services, who fear their key role as intermediaries between young volunteers from the UK's Muslim community - such as Rauf - and al-Qaeda leaders based in the volatile tribal zones along Pakistan's western frontier. The groups, the sources say, have a UK support network to supply funding./ppThe groups' relationship with the intelligence services is complex. Front organisations for the groups have even put up candidates in recent elections and travel without fear throughout Pakistan. Earlier this year The Observer interviewed a representative of one group alleged to be linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba in the foyer of a luxury Lahore hotel./ppLocal politicians said groups in the region were still powerful enough to intimidate the local government and security forces and even to collect tax or mediate in legal disputes in some areas. Roshan Gilani, a Shia community leader in Bahawalpur, said music shops had received Taliban-style threats, telling them to close or risk violence. Prominent Shias have been told they are on a hit list./ppUntil the Mumbai attacks, the recent series of bombings in India had been attributed by most analysts to a home-grown militant outfit: the Indian Mujahideen. With many highly educated and middle-class recruits among its ranks, and led by a 36-year-old computer engineer, the group's members have a very different profile from the Pakistani groups' recruits. But though their paths may be very different, the militants' eventual destination - fanaticism, violence and hate - are the same./ppIntelligence agencies have done much research since 9/11 into how individuals become terrorist killers. Dehumanising the enemy is seen as key. Civilians are no longer seen as innocent but as complicit in a war waged by their governments against Islam. Group dynamics also play a huge role, particularly when teams of militants are isolated from normal society for long periods of time. Training camps - such as those in which Azam Amir Kasab is said to have spent months - are the perfect way of reinforcing solidarity and the new 'world view' which will allow them to execute murderous operations, such as killing diners in a hotel restaurant in cold blood./ppIndian authorities believe local members of the Indian Mujahideen may have acted as scouts to prepare the ground and gather intelligence before the attack. Security services now recognise that militant groups looking to prepare attacks seek out resources and often enter into temporary coalitions with other outfits when necessary. Though criminal links to Islamic militants are rare, they are not unknown, and there are some suggestions that local underworld networks may have been exploited to get the attackers to the targets by sea./ph2India's terror groups/h2pstrongLashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure)/strong/ppBattling to end Indian rule in Kashmir, this Pakistan-based group is routinely blamed by Indian security forces for attacks. The surviving gunman arrested in Mumbai is said to be a member./ppstrongMaoists, also known as Naxalites/strong/ppPrime Minister Manmohan Singh has said the Maoists are the most serious threat to national security. Their battles with police cause a steady death toll./ppstrongLiberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam/strong/ppThe violence caused by this Sri Lankabased separatist group spilled into India in 1991 when a suicide bomber killed Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi./ppstrongSikh separatists /strong/ppPresident Indira Gandhi's Sikh bodyguards shot her in 1984 in revenge for the hundreds killed when the military, aiming to suppress separatist militants, stormed a temple in Amritsar. Riots followed./ppstrongStudents Islamic Movement of India/strong/ppAn Islamist fundamentalist organisation. Indian police suspect involvement in the attack on Jaipur this summer./ppstrongUnited Liberation Front of Asom/strong/ppFormed in 1979 to establish a 'socialist Assam' through armed struggle. One of many such groups in north-east India./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/mumbai-terror-attacks"Mumbai terror attacks/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/india"India/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/terrorism"Global terrorism/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/YnQwp2uwPLyJJSlMjRfONd_p5SY/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/YnQwp2uwPLyJJSlMjRfONd_p5SY/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p