MUMBAI, India – A high-ranking Indian state official Thursday night said military forces had killed the three remaining Islamic militants who had been holding hostages inside the Taj Mahal hotel.
An official with the Maharashtra state home department, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said there were no further details.
Earlier. sources told FOX News that at least two of the gunmen had been killed and the third was wounded.
Officials said nine of the militants were in custody.
As night fell, commandos had surrounded the nearby Oberoi Hotel, where gunmen reportedly were still were holed up and commandos had surrounded the complex.
There were conflicting reports about the status of at least eight hostages being held by gunmen at the ultra-orthodox Jewish Lubavich Chabad Center.
A government officials said the eight had been freed, but an Israeli diplomat appeared to dispute the.
Israeli Ambassador Sallai Meridor told FOX News that he was briefed by officials in Mumbai, and could not confirm that all eight hostages at the Lubavich center had been released.
Chabad spokesman Moni Ender in Israel said there were eight Israelis inside the house, including Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife.
A spokesman for the Lubavitch movement in New York, Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, said attackers "stormed the Chabad house" in Mumbai.
"It seems that the terrorists commandeered a police vehicle which allowed them easy access to the area of the Chabad house and threw a grenade at a gas pump nearby," he said.
Officials at the nearby Israeli Embassy, however, expressed concern for its citizens. There were unconfirmed reports that some of the hostages at the Oberoi hotel were Israelis.
There also were reports that some of the gunmen who took the building in the coordinated attacks were still inside.
The Times of India, meanwhile, reported that at least 70 hostages were rescued at the nearby Trident Hotel.
In other developments:
— State Department officials say at least three Americans were injured in a wave of terrorist attacks that swept through an upscale district of Mumbai, India, Wednesday night.
There were unofficial reports that a few Americans may be among the 119 people so far reported killed in the attacks, but State Department spokesman Robert McInturff said the U.S. government has no information that any U.S. citizens died in the attacks and said that could not identify those who were injured.
U.S. officials have been checking with Indian authorities and hospitals to learn the extent of casualties involving Americans.
He said that U.S. officials also called American citizens who registered with the U.S. consulate there. McInturff also said
"We have a lot of dual citizens who travel a lot," he said. "We have activated a phone tree. We're taking names of those we have and see who they know."
— NDTV reported the dead include 14 policemen and at least six foreigners, though other media outlets were reporting as many as nine foreigners killed. At least 337 people were reported wounded. Officials feared the death toll could climb once the hotels were secured and government forces could conduct a room-by-room search.
The dead reportedly also included the chief of the country's anti-terror squad.
— A FOXNews.com correspondent traveling in the region reports Indian authorities are looking into a possible Pakistan connection.
Local media reports one of the captured gunmen was identified as Abu Ismail, from Faridkot, Pakistan. Police reportedly intercepted communications between the terrorists, and that one of the gunmen instructed the others to say they were from Hyderabad, a major city in central India. The communication reportedly was in Punjab, which is not spoken in Hyderabad, but is spoken in Pakistan.
The Daily Mail reported the suspect may have been trained by Lashkar-e-Toiba, a militant group that operates training camps inside Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
— Indian Coast Guard officials say they boarded the MV Alpha, a Vietnamese-registered ship that is suspected to have transported the terrorists who carried out the attacks. The ship was boarded about 70 miles off the east coast of India. Officials say the decapitated body of the ship's captain was found onboard, and that the vessel probably carried the gunmen from a port in Gujarat, a peninsula in northwest India bordering Pakistan.
Reuters reported a militant at the Lubavitch center phoned an Indian TV station with an offer to talk with government officials about the release of hostages.
The caller reportedly also complained about abuses in Kashmir.
"Are you aware how many people have been killed in Kashmir?" the caller asked, speaking in Urdu. "Are you aware how your army has killed Muslims. Are you aware how many of them have been killed in Kashmir this week?"
The motive for the onslaught was not immediately clear, but Mumbai has frequently been targeted in terrorist attacks blamed on Islamic extremists, including a series of bombings in July 2006 that killed 187 people.
An Indian media report said a previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the attacks in e-mails to several media outlets. There was no way to verify that claim.
Security experts in India and U.S. speculated the group either is an Al Qaeda faction, or has the backing the Muslim terrorist group.
Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism specialist with the Swedish National Defense College said the fact that Britons and Americans were singled out is one indicator of an Al Qaeda connection, along with the coordinated style of the attacks.
India's prime minister blamed "external forces," a veiled reference to Pakistan.
"The well-planned and well-orchestrated attacks, probably with external linkages, were intended to create a sense of panic, by choosing high profile targets and indiscriminately killing foreigners," Singh said in address to the nation.
Click to view photos from the attack sites
Officials at Bombay Hospital, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a Japanese man had died there and nine Europeans had been admitted, three of them in critical condition with gunshots. All had come from the Taj Mahal, the officials said.
At least three top Indian police officers — including the chief of the anti-terror squad — were among those killed, said and A.N. Roy, the top anti-terror police official.
The gunmen appeared to be part of coordinated attacks on at least 10 sites that began around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday local time.
Officials said the group traveled to Mumbai by sea, hijacked vehicles when they landed, then launched attacks their attacks, targeting the main train station and a popular restaurant, where police said they opened fire indiscriminately. The gunmen then rushed two of the city's most exclusive hotels -- the Taj Mahal and Oberoi-Trident -- where they took dozens of Westerners hostage.
The attackers specifically targeted Britons, Americans and Israelis at the hotels and restaurant, witnesses said.
Alex Chamberlain, a British citizen who was dining at the Oberoi, told Sky News television that a gunman ushered 30 to 40 people from the restaurant into a stairway and, speaking in Hindi or Urdu, ordered everyone to put up their hands.
Click to view photos from the attack sites
"They were talking about British and Americans specifically. There was an Italian guy, who, you know, they said: 'Where are you from?" and he said he's from Italy and they said 'fine' and they left him alone. And I thought: 'Fine, they're going to shoot me if they ask me anything — and thank God they didn't," he said.
Chamberlain said he managed to slip away as the patrons were forced to walk up stairs, but he thought much of the group was being held hostage.
The White House, meanwhile, said President Bush expressed condolences to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the attacks.
Press secretary Dana Perino said the president had the conversation with the Indian leader while spending Thanksgiving Day with his family at the Camp David mountaintop retreat in Maryland.
Perino said that Bush offered Singh "support and assistance" as he works to restore order in the populous and growing Southwest Asian nation. The president also wished Singh success as Indian officials investigate "these despicable acts" in Mumbai.
The motive for the onslaught was not immediately clear, but Mumbai has frequently been targeted in terrorist attacks blamed on Islamic extremists, including a series of bombings in July 2006 that killed 187 people.
Mumbai, on the western coast of India overlooking the Arabian Sea, is home to splendid Victorian architecture built during the British Raj and is one of the most populated cities in the world with some 18 million crammed into shantytowns, high rises and crumbling mansions.
Indian authorities ordered schools and colleges and the Bombay Stock Exchange closed Thursday.
Relations between Hindus, who make up more than 80 percent of India's 1 billion population, and Muslims, who make up about 14 percent, have sporadically erupted into bouts of sectarian violence since British-ruled India was split into independent India and Pakistan in 1947.
The Associated Press, Times of London, Times of India, NDTV and FOXNews.com Correspondent Judd Berger contributed to this report.
FOX FORUM: MUMBAI TERROR ATTACKS: A ‘Planned’ Operation Designed to Create Chaos
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