Threat of assault rattles India

NEW DELHI — India remained on edge today amid reports of a threatened air attack, more than a week after gunmen landed on Mumbai's shores and launched a brazen attack that left 170 people dead.

The new threat was contained in an e-mailed warning that referred to the anniversary Saturday of one of the inflammatory events in India's recent history: the 1992 destruction by Hindu mobs of a centuries-old mosque in the north Indian town of Ayodha. That incident has been a flash point of religious tension throughout South Asia.

Survivors of the November attack in Mumbai have been quoted as saying that at least one of the gunmen cited revenge for what happened in Ayodha as a motive behind the coordinated assault on luxury hotels and other busy spots in India's biggest metropolis.

Early today, Indian commandos combed New Delhi's international airport after reports that shots had been fired there. An airport official said no one had been killed, contradicting a report by the British Broadcasting Corp. that Indian security forces had shot six gunmen to death.

Although the e-mailed threat focused on the capital, New Delhi, and the southern cities of Bangalore and Chennai, airports throughout the country went on high alert. Authorities added extra layers of security, including patrols of armed guards and sniffer dogs and thorough inspections of passengers and their belongings.

Many Indians have reacted with incredulity and growing anger to news that their government failed to act on repeated intelligence, including from the United States, warning of a possible terrorist attack on Mumbai by sea. Tens of thousands of Indians have taken to the streets in protest, accusing the government of not protecting its citizens.

Investigators have said the only attacker who was captured has detailed the involvement of a Pakistani militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and its training of the assailants at camps in Pakistan.

Investigators also allege that Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, a known senior commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba, helped mastermind the plot, and Indian authorities have named another Lashkar leader, Yusuf Muzammil.

Pakistani authorities have not acknowledged a link between the attacks and any group based on Pakistani soil, saying it was up to India to provide proof.

Deven Barthi, a deputy commissioner on the Mumbai force, said the weapons used in the attacks came from a factory called the Pakistan Ordnance Factories, The New York Times reported. The factory, based in Pakistan's Punjab province, is under contract to the Pakistani military, he said. The factory also was the source of grenades and explosives used in several earlier terrorist attacks in India, Barthi said.

Other evidence emerged Thursday highlighting the sophistication and cruelty of the attacks. Some of the six people killed at the Jewish center in the city had been treated particularly savagely, police said, with bodies bearing what appeared to be strangulation marks and other wounds that did not come from gunshots or grenades.