MUMBAI, Nov. 28 -- Indian army commandos struggled all day Thursday and into the early hours of Friday to regain control of two luxury hotels and a Jewish center in India's commercial capital, battling armed assailants who were part of a group that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said was "based outside the country."

The coordinated attacks against well-known symbols of India's prosperity and places where Westerners and Israelis gather left at least 125 people dead and more than 320 wounded, authorities said, and transformed parts of Mumbai into a smoldering war zone. Dozens of people remained trapped in the vast hotels, although it was unclear how many gunmen were still inside.

Indian police and terrorism experts said they were uncertain who had carried out the attack, but Singh, in a nationally televised address, used phrases usually taken here to mean Pakistan, raising fears that the violence in Mumbai could raise tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals.

"The group which carried out these attacks, based outside the country, had come with single-minded determination to create havoc in the commercial capital of the country," Singh said. "We will take up strongly with our neighbors that the use of their territory for launching attacks on us will not be tolerated, and that there would be a cost if suitable measures are not taken by them."

Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, said his government condemned the attacks in Mumbai. "It is unfair to blame Pakistan or Pakistanis for these acts of terrorism even before an investigation is undertaken," 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."

Arriving ashore in what police said were at least two rubber dinghies, groups of college-age men on Wednesday roamed the streets of Mumbai with automatic assault rifles and backpacks filled with ammunition and explosives, shooting up crowded places and taking hostages in hotels. One video shown again and again on television depicted the almost giddy face of a young gunman walking down the street with an AK-47 assault rifle.

The attackers struck targets in addition to the hotels and the Jewish center, including a movie theater, a hospital, a railway station, a cafe popular with foreigners and several other sites in the heart of Mumbai.

A British businessman, Rakesh Patel, who escaped the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel, told television stations that two young men with a machine gun forced 15 hostages onto the hotel roof and told them that "they wanted anyone with British or American passports."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Robert McInturff said three Americans were among those injured in the Mumbai attacks, the Associated Press reported. He said there was no indication that any U.S. citizens had been killed. The Web site of the Synchronicity Foundation, a Faber, Va.-based spiritual organization whose members were staying at one of the hotels, said two Americans in the group were feared dead and two Americans and two Canadians had been wounded by gunfire.

Five non-Indians -- an Australian, a Briton, a German, an Italian and a Japanese -- were reported killed.

"All we can say now is this is the worst, most brazen, audacious attacks in Indian history because people were shooting openly on the street," police official A.K. Sharma said. He spoke Thursday at the funeral of a police inspector who was killed while trying to stop gunmen at the train station. "It's a violent situation that's still ongoing. Mumbai remains at war."

As the sun set Thursday, some hostages unfurled "Save Us" banners from the windows of the Taj, across from the Gateway of India monument and Mumbai's waterfront. Others emerged from upper-story windows using bedsheets tied together as ladders. Earlier in the day, at least four bodies and dozens of freed hostages were taken out of the hotel -- a castlelike, 1903 landmark that was set on fire during the attacks.

The special forces teams went room-to-room in the five-star Oberoi hotel to rescue 25 hostages, and police launched a fresh offensive to sweep out gunmen believed to be still holed up in the iconic Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel.

Two explosions on the top floors of the Taj were shown live on Indian television , while the Oberoi's 18th floor was engulfed in flames. As the commando teams removed the hostages, helicopters circled overhead and crowds of onlookers cheered from the street below. Five gunmen were reportedly still inside the hotel. Earlier, at least four dead bodies and a trickle of hostages were taken out of the Taj--a castle-like, 1903 landmark that was set on fire during the attacks and has been transformed into a smoldering symbol of a city under siege.

Eight Israelis were being held hostage at a Jewish outreach center, officials said, including a young rabbi and his wife. Their condition, and the total number of hostages trapped in or rescued from the hotels, was not known.

"We can say, this is the worst most brazen attacks in Indian history because people were shooting openly on the street," said police official A.K. Sharma. He was speaking at the funeral of a popular police inspector, who was killed Wednesday night while trying to stop gunmen who were attacking at the train station. "It's a violent situation that's still ongoing. Mumbai remains at war."

With the attacks stretching into their 16th hour, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh condemned the terror strikes in a nationally televised address Thursday afternoon. Some news channels split their screens to show both the prime minister speaking and the ongoing battle between security personnel and the terrorists.

Singh said the Mumbai attacks were "well-orchestrated" by terrorists, who chose well-known and high-profile targets. The prime minister called for creation of "a central agency" to investigate terrorism in India, where some 44 bomb blasts in seven different cities have killed more than 150 people since May.

As the sun set, some hostages unfurled "Save Us" banners from the windows of the Taj hotel, across from the Gateway of India monument and Mumbai's waterfront. Others climbed from upper-story windows using bed sheets tied together as ladders.

Authorities said more than 300 people were wounded in the highly coordinated attacks that started 10:30 Wednesday night. In addition to the five-star hotels, bands of masked gunmen armed with assault rifles, hand grenades and explosives attacked a popular café packed with tourists; the historic Metro Cinema; a crowded train station; the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish center and a hospital.

In one case, a police van was stolen and gunmen opened fire in the street indiscriminately.

At the Jewish center, five rounds of shooting were heard Thursday and a grenade was thrown, said army officials who were surrounding the site and launching a rescue effort.

Despite the recent wave of bombings in India, Wednesday's assaults were seen as unprecedented, authorities said, in terms of the open, coordinated effort to lay siege to well-known symbols of India's prosperity and to places where Westerners gathered.

A girl fills a jug with water at the camp for internally displaced people in Kibati, Congo, on Thursday.

1 of 2

The camp in Kibati, near Goma, is home to thousands of people seeking refuge from warfare between a Tutsi militia and Congolese forces. The fighting is an offshoot of the Hutu-Tutsi animosity that culminated in the 1994 genocide of 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus in neighboring Rwanda.

The U.N. Security Council has approved 3,000 troops to bolster the 17,000-strong peacekeeping force charged with the daunting task of stemming violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province.

"It's extremely volatile," said Andrej Mahecic, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees' spokesman in Geneva, Switzerland.

Mahecic said he did not know whether the gunmen involved in Friday's attack were with the Tutsi militia or Congolese military.

"We have seen both sides doing this," he said.

"The fact that the camps are so close to the front lines is a huge cause of concern for us," Mahecic said.

The agency says there has been "relative calm" in North Kivu this week, allowing officials to develop a displaced persons camp more than 9 miles from Kibati, on the outskirts of Goma, the North Kivu capital. The new camp is supposed to alleviate some of the strain on the burgeoning Kibati camps. Map of Goma, Congo »

Friday's "incident adds more to the pressure to move these people as soon as possible," Mahecic said.

The warfare between Congolese government forces and rebels under the command of Laurent Nkunda represents the lingering tensions between Hutus and Tutsis in neighboring Rwanda.

Rwandan Hutus who fled to Congo after the massacres feared returning home, believing they would be targeted for revenge by Tutsis, who now dominate the Rwandan government. Rwandan Hutus remained in the jungles of eastern Congo, where they preyed on local residents and participated in Hutu militias.

Nkunda, a Tutsi and former Congolese army general, has repeatedly blamed the Congolese government for not protecting Tutsis from Rwandan Hutus in Congo.

A January cease-fire between Nkunda's forces and the Congolese army fell through in August. Nkunda's forces launched an offensive, and an estimated 250,000 people have fled their homes amid the fighting, which also has drawn in militias allied with the government.

Nkunda declared a unilateral cease-fire October 29, but fighting and reports of atrocities have continued.

The U.N. special envoy to Congo, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasango, met with Nkunda earlier this week. Rebels pulled back from a strategic area after the meeting.

Jaya Murthy, spokesman for the U.N. Children's Fund in Goma, said that 1.1 million North Kivu residents -- about 20 percent of the population -- have been displaced in violence since December 2006.

Murthy said he heard reports Friday of looting and an unconfirmed report of a person burned alive in Kanyabayonga, north of Goma. Farther north, thousands have fled the town of Kanya and are "hiding in the bush" after fighting there, the U.N. reported.

The U.N. is transporting therapeutic milk by helicopter to Kanya and Kanyabayonga to feed hundreds of malnourished children.

Many civilians are on the move across North Kivu to escape the warfare, Murthy said.

UNICEF has issued a statement on humanitarian conditions in North Kivu, saying there is a "very high risk of child deaths due to malnutrition, malaria, respiratory infections."

Cholera is endemic, it said, and threatens to worsen without latrines and clean water. Watch how Congo could be on the verge of a health catastrophe »

UNICEF offered only one nugget of good news: Two schools in the Kibati settlement have reopened after people who occupied the schools moved out.

In Rutshuru, 85 percent of schools remain closed, affecting 150,000 students. Plans to pass out school kits are under way after Nkunda's group said it would reopen all schools next week.

"Today, there's still insecurity," Murthy said, adding that aid workers have limited access to many areas and a planned humanitarian corridor has yet to open.

Aid organizations have long said the enormous African country -- which borders nine nations and is more than twice the size of Alaska -- is suffering a humanitarian disaster. World Vision says the conflict in Congo, ongoing since 1997, is the deadliest since World War II.

"The last decade of conflict has resulted in some 4 million deaths; an estimated 1,200 people die every day due to ongoing epidemics and war-related causes; some aid agencies estimate upward of 1,400 deaths per day," the Christian relief organization said in a news release.