Published: December 01, 2008 04:34 pm      

India clears bodies from last Mumbai siege site

MUMBAI, India (AP) — Soldiers removed the last bodies from the shattered Taj Mahal hotel Monday as India formally demanded Pakistan take “strong action” against those behind the 60-hour seige that left at least 172 people dead.

The United States, meanwhile, called on Pakistan to fully cooperate with investigations into the attack, which India has blamed on a banned Pakistani militant group. Mumbai’s most influential Muslim cemetery rejected the corpses of nine of the gunmen and said “Islam does not permit this sort of barbaric crime.”

The three-day terror attack was apparently carried out by just 10 gunmen and exposed the weakness of India’s security forces. The country’s top law enforcement official resigned amid growing criticism that the attackers appeared better trained, better coordinated and better armed than police. Two provincial officials offered to step down on Monday.

An Indian police official said the only gunman captured alive after the attacks claimed to belong to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani militant group with links to the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. The group has long been seen as a creation of the Pakistani intelligence service.

Pakistan must “follow the evidence wherever it leads,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in London. “This is a time for complete, absolute, total transparency and cooperation and that’s what we expect.”

She said the perpetrators of attacks “must be brought to justice.”

In India, Pakistan’s high commissioner to the country was called to the foreign ministry and told that “elements from Pakistan” had carried out the attacks, ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash told reporters.

The commissioner was told that India “expects that strong action would be taken against those elements,” Prakash said.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said the men who attacked India’s financial and entertainment capital had no links to any government. He called the attackers “non-state actors,” and warned against letting their actions lead to greater enmity in the region.

“Such a tragic incident must bring opportunity rather than the defeat of a nation,” Zardari said in an interview with Aaj television. “We don’t think the world’s great nations and countries can be held hostage by non-state actors.”

The top provincial official, Vilasrao Deshmukh, offered to resign Monday, as did his deputy, R.R. Patil, who outraged many by referring to the attacks as “small incidents.”

In Mumbai, security forces declared the landmark 565-room Taj Mahal hotel — the scene of Saturday’s final battle — cleared of booby traps and bodies.

“We were apprehensive about more bodies being found. But this is not likely — all rooms in the Taj have been opened and checked,” said Maharashtra state government spokesman Bhushan Gagrani.

The army had already cleared other sites, including the five-star Oberoi hotel and the Mumbai headquarters of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group.

Israeli emergency workers sorted through the shattered glass and splintered furniture at the Jewish center Monday to gather the victims’ body parts. At one point, one of the men opened a prayer book amid the rubble and stopped to pray.