Elite Black Cat commandos are scouring the wreckage of a three-day battle with militants which killed 195 people in Mumbai.

Public anger, mostly aimed at neighbouring Pakistan, has begun to mount after four militants were killed in a running gunbattle through a maze of corridors, rooms and halls in the luxury Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.

They were the last of ten gunmen who attacked Mumbai's top two plushest hotels, its biggest railway station and several other landmarks with grenades and assault rifles in a rampage that began on Wednesday night.

Hundreds of people were trapped or taken hostage. The dead include 22 foreigners - five Americans, three Germans, one Australian, British yachting magnate Andreas Liveras, two French, one Canadian, an Italian, a Japanese, a Singaporean and a Thai. Five others have yet to be identified.

The gunmen left bodies in their wake, some with grenades stuffed into the mouths or concealed underneath. The ground floor was gutted, the wood-panelled walls blackened and cracked by explosions and fire.

National Security Guard director general JK Dutt said 22 bodies had been removed from the Taj. Only one survivor, a member of staff, has since been found there.

Many guests were trapped in their rooms while the battle raged around them. They emerged to harrowing scenes.

An American woman called Patricia said: "The blood, everywhere the blood." Choking back tears, she added: "And when we came down to the lobby, all the hundreds and hundreds of policemen were standing there looking so fried and so sad."

Nine of the gunmen were killed, a tenth caught alive. The arrested man has confessed to being a member of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, which has long fought Indian forces in disputed Kashmir and was blamed for an attack on India's parliament in December 2001, newspapers said.

He told interrogators they wanted to go down in history for an Indian version of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, according to TV reports.

Several newspapers said some of the militants had checked into the Taj hotel days or weeks before the attacks, while another said they had rented an apartment in the city a few months ago pretending to be students.

India has denied reports any of the attackers were British. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has hinted that nuclear rival Pakistan may have been involved and evidence mounted the attackers may have hatched their plan there and come to Mumbai by sea.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, battling Islamic radicals in his own nation, told Indian television he would co-operate in the investigation.

© Independent Television News Limited 2009. All rights reserved.