Indian police question many over Mumbai attacks

By Krittivas Mukherjee and Rina Chandran

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Mumbai police said on Tuesday they were interrogating many suspects in the deadly attacks on India's financial capital but had not arrested anybody other than the one Islamic militant captured alive.

Mumbai's Police Commissioner Hasan Gafoor also scotched speculation that more than 10 militants had been involved in the rampage on two luxury hotels, a railway station and a Jewish center which killed 183 people over three days.

"There have been no arrests so far except the one terrorist we have detained. We are interrogating many suspects," Gafoor told a news conference, the first since the attacks.

Azam Amir Kasav, the only gunmen of the 10 not killed by commandos, told investigators he is a Pakistani citizen from Punjab, Gafoor said. Gafoor declined to comment about the nationalities of the nine militants killed by commandos.

The gunmen and his fellow militants studied commando tactics for a year or more, Gafoor said.

"They were trained by ex-army officers," he said, without naming the army.

Senior investigators have said a former Pakistani army officer led the training organized by the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, which made its name fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.

Gafoor said the ship which carried the attackers to Mumbai came from Karachi. On arrival, the militants fanned out in five taxis in which they planted explosives. Two of them went off, while the other three were defused.

Gafoor also ruled out any direct local support for the attack and said no hotel employee was involved. "The militants did not know the hotel inside out," Gafoor said.

Indian media had said some hotel employees may have been involved and that the militants knew the hotels' layouts in great detail.

Asked whether specific warnings about the attacks had been provided, Gafoor said: "There was no specific intelligence."

He said each militant was carrying one AK-47 assault rifle with 300 rounds, one pistol and several grenades.

Asked about the involvement of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Britain's Scotland Yard police in the probe, he said the Mumbai police were sharing information with them and other world security agencies.

(Writing by Surojit Gupta, Editing by Bryson Hull and Mark Trevelyan)