The army had already cleared other sites, including the five-star Oberoi hotel and the Mumbai headquarters of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group.

On Monday morning, parents dropped their children off at school and many shopkeepers opened their doors for the first time since the attacks began.

"I think this is the first Monday I am glad to be coming to work," said Donica Trivedi, 23, an employee of a public relations agency.

Others were uneasy.

"I feel totally insecure," said Rajendra Shah, 55, an insurance agent. "I'm very scared, but what can you do? I must go to work."

As more details of the response to the attack emerged, a picture formed of woefully unprepared security forces. "These guys could do it next week again in Mumbai and our responses would be exactly the same," said Ajai Sahni, head of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management and who has close ties to India's police and intelligence.

"The way Mumbai police handled the situation, they were not combat ready," said Jimmy Katrak, a security consultant. "You don't need the Indian army to neutralize eight to nine people."

With no SWAT team in the city of 18 million, authorities called in the only unit in the country trained to deal with such crises.

But the National Security Guards, which largely devotes its resources to protecting top officials, is based outside of New Delhi and it took the commandos nearly 10 hours to reach the scene.

That gave the gunmen time to consolidate control over two luxury hotels and the Jewish center, Sahni said.