The attack on India's financial capital bears all the trademarks of al-Qaida — simultaneous assaults meant to kill scores of Westerners in iconic buildings — but clues so far point to homegrown Indian terrorists, global intelligence officials said yesterday.

Spy agencies around the world were caught off guard by Wednesday's deadly attack in Mumbai, in which gunmen sprayed crowds with bullets, torched landmark hotels and took dozens of hostages. State officials said 119 people had died and 288 were injured in the attacks, including at least three Americans.

Sporadic gunfire and explosions at the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels dwindled overnight, although Indian snipers at the site of a besieged Jewish center in Mumbai opened fire yesterday.

"We have been actively monitoring plots in Britain and abroad and there was nothing to indicate something like this was about to happen," a British security official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his work.

Britain is the former colonial power in India and Pakistan and closely monitors terrorist suspects in those countries.

In condemning the bloodshed, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said: "This is a callous, inhuman and indiscriminate attack on people of all races and all religions. This attack in Mumbai is an attack on all of us because democracy in India is vibrant and because Mumbai is one of the world's most diverse cities."

Analysts said this week's attacks surpassed previous plots carried out by domestic groups in terms of complexity, the number of people involved and their success in achieving their primary goal: namely, to spread fear.

"This is a new, horrific milestone in the global jihad," said Bruce Riedel, a former South Asia analyst for the CIA and National Security Council and author of the book, "The Search for al-Qaeda." "No indigenous Indian group has this level of capability. The goal is to damage the symbol of India's economic renaissance, undermine investor confidence and provoke an India-Pakistani crisis."

Several analysts and officials said the attacks bore the hallmarks of Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed, two networks of Muslim extremists from Pakistan that have targeted India before. Jaish-i-Mohammed was blamed for an attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001.

Both groups have carried out a long campaign of violence in the disputed territory of Kashmir, which India and Pakistan have fought over for six decades. The roots of the long-running conflict are religious: A majority of India's population is Hindu; most Pakistanis are Muslim.

A U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Lashkar-i-Taiba, which means "Army of the Pure," and Jaish-i-Mohammed, or "Army of Mohammed," are "the thing people are starting to look at. But I can't caution enough to treat it as a theory, a working assumption. It's still too early for hard and fast" conclusions.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in a nationally televised address, used phrases usually taken here to point to 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."

The group that claimed responsibility, Deccan Mujahideen, was unknown to global security officials. The name suggested the group was Indian.

One suspect reportedly called an Indian television station, speaking the main Pakistani language of Urdu, to demand the return of Muslim lands — a reference to Kashmir, territory claimed by both India and Pakistan.

But Ajai Sahni, head of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management, said the attack was a departure from past assaults waged over Kashmir. Other such attacks had targeted Indian legislators, not Westerners.

President Bush yesterday expressed condolences to Prime Minister Singh in a phone call at his Camp David, Md., mountaintop retreat.

President-elect Barack Obama spoke by telephone with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday for an update and also received several intelligence briefings.

Another British security official said the attack doesn't look to have been directed by al-Qaida's core leadership, which has been weakened by the deaths of several leaders and key operatives.

Al-Qaida's core leadership is believed to be fewer than 100 people now, said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore.

The British security official said it appeared the attack was inspired by Islamic extremist ideology and al-Qaida propaganda popular among radicalized youths. Many of the attackers in the Mumbai assault were young.