Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Indian forces searched for the remaining attackers hiding in a hotel in Mumbai nearly 60 hours after a group of militants stormed locations in the city, including a Jewish center where five hostages were killed.

The siege on the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel is over, Press Trust of India said in a news flash. Three attackers were killed at the hotel, the National Security Guard said at a briefing, adding some guests may still be in the complex.

The gunshots that rang out earlier from the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel in south Mumbai have stopped and firemen were seen putting out a fire that started after daybreak. Busloads of commandoes moved in to do a room-by-room search.

The death toll was at 160 after the attacks on 10 sites in the city and 11 militants were killed, CNN said. The Indian government said at least 370 were wounded as the attackers moved through India’s financial hub, targeting the Jewish center, the Oberoi-Trident hotel complex, the Taj in the city center, a railroad station and a restaurant.

Most of those who died were Indians and a final death toll hasn’t been officially released. Five Americans died in the attacks, the U.S. State Department said in a statement. More U.S. citizens are missing.

A German, two Australians, two Frenchmen, a Briton, a Japanese, a Canadian, a Singaporean and an Italian were among the dead, the Associated Press said yesterday.

Rabbis Killed

Two rabbis from New York were among the hostages and two attackers who died at the Jewish Chabad-Lubavitch Center in Mumbai when it was stormed by Indian commandos.

Orthodox Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, 29, and his wife, Rivka, 28, were confirmed dead, Motti Bukchin, a spokesman for the Israeli emergency-response organization Zaka, said yesterday in a telephone interview from Jerusalem.

Rabbi Leibish Teitelbaum, a Brooklyn native, was also killed, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement yesterday. The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

The attackers began planning their assaults six months ago, India’s NDTV reported, citing an account from a captured terrorist. A seized global positioning system showed some of the group left Karachi, Pakistan, as early as Nov. 12, NDTV said.

A little-known Islamist group, the Deccan Mujahedeen, claimed responsibility for the shootings and explosions across the western coastal city, Indian Home Ministry official M.L. Kumawat said.

Tactical Shift

The targeting of Westerners marks a shift in tactics for Islamic militants in India who have attacked Hindu targets in the past, as they strike at the international links that helped the country’s economy grow at 9 percent or more each of the past three years.

Lashkar-i-Taiba or Jaish-i-Muhammad, two Muslim extremist terrorist groups from Pakistan that have attacked India in the past, may be involved, MSNBC reported on its Web site, citing unidentified analysts and counterterrorism officials. The groups are linked to violence in Kashmir, a region over which India and Pakistan have fought.

Before the assault on the Jewish center, nine of the attackers had been killed and one, a Pakistani, was arrested, said R.R. Patil, deputy chief minister of the state of Maharashtra. They arrived in Mumbai by sea, Patil said yesterday.

The attackers were familiar with their targets and had probably done surveys in advance, a leader of Indian commandos said yesterday in a video on the Times of India Web site.

“We came up against highly motivated terrorists,” Vice- Admiral J.S. Bedi, whose commandos led the assault against the militants, said in televised comments. He showed pictures of recovered hand grenades, tear-gas shells and AK-47 ammunition.

Singh Pledge

India will “go after” individuals and organizations behind the attacks, which were “well-planned with external linkages,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a televised address, without identifying nations.

At the Oberoi, where 24 bodies were recovered, rescued guests clutching passports and bags were loaded into buses and cars by authorities as they fled the hotel. The Oberoi-Trident complex was cleared of assailants today, the National Security Guard said. Two terrorists were killed at the Trident.

Extremists within India are concerned about the Indian government’s “closer alignment with the West,” said Rory Medcalf, the Sydney-based Lowy Institute’s program director for international security. Medcalf, a former official at the Australian High Commission in New Delhi, spoke in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was keeping President George W. Bush up to date on the situation in Mumbai, the White House said. She also called President-elect Barack Obama.

Multiple attacks have hit cities in majority-Hindu India with bombs planted in markets, theaters and near mosques this year, leaving more than 300 people dead.

Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari said “non-state actors” were forcing their agenda on India and Pakistan and that the two governments mustn’t allow them to succeed.

Pakistan’s government turned down India’s request to send the chief of the military intelligence agency to investigate the Mumbai terror attacks, CNN-IBN television reported today.

Zardari said earlier he will send the intelligence head to India for the first time to counter claims that the attackers are linked to his country.

Offering Cooperation

Pakistan’s “government will cooperate with India in exposing and apprehending the culprits and the masterminds behind” the Mumbai terrorist attacks, according to a statement by the president’s office, citing Zardari’s phone conversation yesterday with Singh.

The attacks in Mumbai show a militant movement among Indian-born followers of Islam is aligning its campaign with those from majority-Muslim countries, while seeking to hit economic interests, B. Raman, the former counterterrorism director of India’s intelligence agency, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

“It is unfair to blame Pakistan or Pakistanis for these acts of terrorism even before an investigation is undertaken,” Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani, said in a statement. “Instead of scoring political points at the expense of a neighboring country that is itself a victim of terrorism, it is time for India’s leaders to work together with Pakistan’s elected leaders in putting up a joint front against terrorism.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Vipin V. Nair in Mumbai at vnair12@bloomberg.net; Debarati Roy in Mumbai at droy5@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 28, 2008 22:52 EST