Police: Mumbai Gunmen Came by Sea From Pakistan

U.S. National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell said the same group that carried out last week's attack is believed to be behind the Mumbai trains bombings that killed more than 200 two years ago.

Locals get their hair trimmed by roadside barbers near Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, India, Tuesday,...

Locals get their hair trimmed by roadside barbers near Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, India, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2008. The scarred and traumatized city struggled back to its feet Monday, reopening schools and businesses, as residents tried to come to terms with the string of terror attacks that brought bloodshed to the heart of Mumbai. The mourning for the 172 people killed in the three days of violence that started Wednesday night was not over, however. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

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While McConell did not identify the group by name, the Indian government has attributed the 2006 attack to Lashkar and the Students Islamic Movement of India.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said extremists were "apparently targeting Americans and Britons, but the truth is that most of those who were attacked were Indians."

Gates also told a Pentagon news conference that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, was headed to the region.

Of greater concern for India was the apparent failure to act on multiple warnings ahead of the Mumbai attacks, which Indian navy chief Sureesh Mehta called "a systemic failure."

India's foreign intelligence agency also had warnings as recently as September that Pakistan-based terrorists were plotting attacks on Mumbai, according to a government intelligence official familiar with the matter.

The information, intercepted from telephone conversations apparently coming out of Pakistan, indicated that hotels might be targeted but did not specify which ones, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk publicly about the details.

The information was relayed to domestic security authorities, but it was unclear whether the government acted on the intelligence.

The Taj Mahal Hotel, scene of much of the bloodshed, had tightened security with metal detectors and other measures in the weeks before the attacks, after being warned of a possible threat.

But the precautions "could not have stopped what took place," Ratan Tata, chairman of the company that owns the hotel, told CNN. "They (the gunmen) didn't come through that entrance. They came from somewhere in the back."

The building was the last to be cleared, following the Oberoi hotel, the Jewish center, and other sites struck in this city of 18 million.