Mumbai India

The Indian government acknowledged Friday that the militant attacks on Mumbai had exposed lapses in security, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the strike originated on a neighbor's soil, a clear reference to Pakistan. The Congress Party-led ruling coalition is facing renewed criticism from the opposition, which accuses it of being weak on security after the three-day rampage by gunmen in India's financial capital last week.

For Sarita Khilnani, it's the little things -- like the ring of her doorbell Wednesday night -- that suddenly fill her with fear and remind her of the 42 hours she spent locked in her room at Mumbai's Taj hotel. Exactly one week earlier, terrorists had blasted their way into the hotel. When the doorbell rang at Room 363 that day, it was by a heavy hand, and followed by furious knocking. It was 1 a.m. Friday, and Sarita, 32, and her mother, Mira, 62, stood at the door, their hands clasped.

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai may mark a new focus on Western targets by the group widely thought responsible for the plot, prompting concern among U.S. intelligence officials that Lashkar-e-Taiba is emerging both as a more potent threat to American interests and as a potential successor to Al Qaeda. Senior U.S.

The alleged gunman captured in last month's Mumbai attacks had originally intended to seize hostages and outline demands in a series of dramatic calls to the media, according to his confession obtained Saturday. Ajmal Amir Kasab said he and his partner, who massacred dozens of people in the city's main train terminus, had planned a rooftop standoff, but abandoned the plan because they couldn't find a suitable building, the statement to police says.

The Muslims of terror-plagued Mumbai know the drill. First there is bloodshed. Then come the whispers, the accusing stares, the scarcely veiled hostility. "They are going to say that all Muslims do this," restaurateur Naved Akhtar Mirza said, after gunmen, apparently Islamic extremists, stormed India's financial capital last month, shooting up a train station and killing hostages at two hotels and a Jewish center.

All approaches to the stately Taj Mahal hotel remain blocked by police checkpoints, and the smell of its charred woodwork continues to waft in the heavy air of Mumbai's crowded waterfront. But the doors of this Victorian symbol of last month's terrorist attacks will reopen tonight, along with the similarly targeted Oberoi hotel across town, in the highest-profile attempt yet by this scarred city to return to normality. Like other efforts here to deal with the fallout of the Nov.

With frightening precision, eight explosions struck a busy commuter railway in rapid succession Tuesday evening in this bustling port city, killing 190 people, injuring hundreds and turning the rush hour into a grisly tableau of carnage.

Ward 1 of Hinduja Hospital treats male patients with psychiatric and skin disorders, but not the kind seen here Wednesday. There was the man suffering such mental anguish that he emitted terrified, bone-chilling screams every few minutes. Propped up in beds around him were other dazed-looking patients with fragments of metal embedded in their skin -- along their backs, in their arms and legs.

Investigators said the powerful military explosive RDX, often used by Islamic militants in India's portion of Kashmir, was used in the deadly July 11 attack on Mumbai's commuter rail system. Some Indians saw the announcement as further evidence of a link between Pakistan-based militants and the seven blasts on Mumbai's commuter train network that killed 182 people and injured more than 800.

Indian police have arrested a fourth suspect in the Mumbai train blasts that killed more than 200 people, police said. The suspect, Tanvir Ahmed Ansari, is a Mumbai-based practitioner of traditional medicine, investigator K.P. Raghuvanshi told reporters. He was formally arrested late Sunday. Raghuvanshi said that Ansari came into contact with Islamic militant groups during a 2001 visit to Bahrain and in 2004 visited Pakistan, where he allegedly learned to make bombs.