Commandos ended a three-day rampage by Islamist gunmen in Mumbai today, 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, and officials in Islamabad said the next two days would be crucial for relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
One senior security official said Islamabad would divert troops to its border with India and away from fighting militants on the Afghan frontier if tensions erupted over Mumbai.
"If something happens on that front, the war on terror won't be our priority," the senior security officer told journalists at a briefing. "We'll take out everything from the western border. We won't leave anything there."
Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh has said "elements" in Pakistan may have been responsible for the attacks in Mumbai.
Other officials have said most, perhaps all, of the attackers were from Pakistan, a Muslim nation carved out of Hindu-majority India in bloodshed in 1947. The two countries have fought three wars since the partition, and relations have always been tense.
Today after the final battle inside the Taj Mahal hotel, a group of about 50 protesters outside pumped their fists skyward shouting "Our soldiers came and Pakistan ran away".
One waved an Indian flag.
At the time, commandos and rescue personnel were still cleaning up wreckage near the still-smouldering hotel.
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 suggesting that the men came to Mumbai by sea from Karachi, Pakistan's main port.
"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 reporters.
Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari, battling Islamic radicals in his own nation, told CNN-IBN television he would cooperate with the investigation.
"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 said.
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 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 facade. The ground floor was gutted, the wood-panelled walls blackened and cracked by explosions and fire.
Nine of the gunmen were killed. A tenth caught alive told interrogators they wanted to be remembered for an Indian version of the September 11th, 2001, attacks on the United States, Times Now TV said, quoting an unidentified Defence Ministry official.
They were also inspired by the bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad in September, it said.
The Taj Mahal was the last battleground after three days of intense fighting in various parts of the city of 18 million.
Several newspapers said some of the militants had checked into the hotel days or weeks before the attacks, while the Times of India said they had rented an apartment in the city a few months ago pretending to be students.
Yesterday, an army general said the gunmen appeared to be very familiar with the hotel's layout and were well-trained.
"At times we found them matching us in combat and movement," one commando told the Hindustan Times. "They were either army regulars or have done a long stint of commando training."
Late today, M.L. Kumawat, a senior official in India's Home Ministry, said the official toll was 183 killed, 20 of them police or soldiers. Earlier, Mumbai disaster authorities said at least 195 people had been killed and 295 wounded.
The death toll rose as bodies were pulled from the Taj and the nearby Trident-Oberoi hotel, scene of another siege that ended yesterday.
The attacks struck at the heart of Mumbai, the engine of an economic boom that has made India a favourite emerging market with investors. It is also home to the "Bollywood" film industry, the epitome of glamour in a country blighted by poverty.
The arrested man has confessed to being a member of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, which has long fought Indian forces in disputed Kashmir and was blamed for an attack on India's parliament in December 2001, newspapers said.
Authorities said 22 foreigners were among the dead, comprising three Germans, three Israelis, one American, one Australian, a Briton, two Canadians, an Italian, a Japanese, a Singaporean, a Mauritian, a Thai and a Chinese national. Five were unidentified, they said.
The US State Department has also said five Americans were killed and two French nationals are also known to have died. India denied reports any of the attackers were British.
Reuters