MADRID AND BOSTON — As investigators focused Saturday on whether the attacks in Mumbai, India, were the work of a militant group with a history of strikes on the country, the Pakistani government pledged to investigate any evidence of involvement by extremists based on its territory.
Pakistani officials promised to look into the alleged role of "nonstate actors," a phrase generally used to mean militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, and President Asif Ali Zardari pledged quick action against any individual or group shown to be involved.
But Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told reporters that India had not presented Pakistan any such proof.
U.S. and other Western investigators are supporting efforts by Indian authorities to determine the identities of the attackers, and say they have been briefed on the status of the investigation.
Indian officials said the teams of attackers that struck Wednesday night in the center of India's commerce and film industry had planned to kill 5,000 people. At least one attacker was wounded and captured.
Indian officials said the captured gunman was Pakistani. A senior Western security official, who, like others, discussed the case on condition of anonymity because of its sensitivity, said the gunman was providing leads implicating Lashkar. The group has denied involvement.
"The anti-terrorism squad has got this guy, and they're getting him to spill the beans," the security official said. "He's telling them a lot."
The gunman has been tentatively identified as Ajmal Amir Kamal or Ajmal Amir Qasab from the Faridkot district of Pakistan's Punjab province, said a person close to the investigation. The gunman and a second attacker took part in the shooting assault on a train station and hijacked a police car, setting off a chase during which police shot out the tires, pursued them as they commandeered a private vehicle, and finally cornered and shot the gunman, the Western security official said. The other attacker was killed.
Investigators suspect that a contingent of about a dozen attackers affiliated with Lashkar-e-Taiba traveled by sea from the Pakistani port city of Karachi on a merchant ship, the official said. The investigators suspect the gunmen hijacked an Indian vessel, killed three of the crew members and forced a fourth to steer them to Mumbai, where they killed him, a second Western source said. They went ashore in a rubber Zodiac boat and converged with fellow gunmen, the Western officials said.
