* Mumbai police said over the weekend that the only gunman they’d captured during the attacks — which left nearly 200 dead and more than 300 wounded — claimed to belong to a Pakistani militant group. But even if the trouble was imported, the violence will most certainly turn a spotlight of suspicion on Muslims in India. Already, my relatives are hunkered down for a sectarian backlash they expect from anti-terrorism agencies, police and angry Hindu fundamentalists.

los angeles Times (US)

* In the end, such attacks come down to politics. This was a politically motivated assault on the Indian state, and the key to stopping such atrocities occurring again will be a political solution to the virulent scourge of militant Islamism. The Pakistani connection of the terrorists who brought carnage to Mumbai is growing steadily clearer. One captured attacker has reportedly admitted to belonging to the Kashmiri militant group, Lashkar-e-Toiba, which has been supported in the past by the Pakistani intelligence services... The new administration of President-elect Barack Obama must insist that this comes to an end, on pain of a termination of American aid deliveries to Pakistan. More urgently, America must use its influence with India and Pakistan to cool relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

The independent (UK)

* The world is afraid that India and Pakistan could take out their armies against each other and then helplessly watch the confrontation escalate into a nuclear standoff. This has happened before and the world had to come in and break the clinch. Why should the two go back to that... Pakistan is reacting to the Indian side’s allegations that the attackers had come from Pakistan. But much more than prima facie evidence is needed to connect all the dots. More significantly, the fact is that, even if they came from Pakistan, it proves nothing because Pakistan is fighting the same terrorists with a global outreach within its borders.

... contd.