The gunmen who attacked Mumbai wanted to go down in history for an Indian 9/11, according to media reports. Indian commandos killed the last remaining gunmen holed up at a luxury hotel in the city yesterday, ending a 60-hour rampage in India's financial capital that left at least 195 people dead.

The gunmen had planned every detail, knew the layout of the Taj Mahal and Trident Oberoi hotels they targeted, had commando-style training and even had snacks such as dry fruit stuffed in their backpacks, it was claimed.

The capture of one of the militants, a fluent English-speaking 21-year-old from Pakistan according to reports, has highlighted the plans of the Islamist group.

"The entire idea was to replicate the JW Marriott at the Taj," Times Now television reported, quoting a defence official present at the interrogation of the man, named Azam Amir Kasav. The official was referring to one of Pakistan's worst bomb attacks, when a lorry packed with explosives all but destroyed the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad and killed at least 55 people in September.

"They wanted to reduce the symbols of economic strength to rubble, the Taj and Trident, so they cannot be rebuilt," he said. "They talked of a 9/11 to bring down the buildings."

Some 295 people were also wounded in the violence that started when at least a dozen heavily armed assailants attacked 10 sites across Mumbai on Wednesday night. At least 20 soldiers and police were among the dead, and among the foreigners killed were Americans, Germans, Canadians, Israelis and nationals from Britain, Italy, Japan, China, Thailand, Australia and Singapore.

By yesterday morning the death toll stood at 195, the deadliest attack in India since 1993 when serial bombings in Mumbai killed 257 people. But officials said the death toll was likely to rise as more bodies were brought out of the hotels.

Orange flames and black smoke engulfed the landmark 565-room Taj Mahal hotel after dawn yesterday as Indian forces ended the siege there in a hail of gunfire, just hours after elite commandos stormed a Jewish centre and found nine hostages dead.

"There were three terrorists; we have killed them," said JK Dutt, director general of India's National Security Guard commando unit. A state government spokesman said at least 11 gunmen had been killed and one captured alive.

Some hotel guests were still believed to be in their rooms. "They are still scared, so even when we request them to come out and identify ourselves, they are naturally afraid," Dutt said.

Indians have begun burying their dead, many of them security force members killed fighting the gunmen. In the southern city of Bangalore, black-clad commandos formed an honour guard for the flag-draped coffin of Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, who was killed in the fighting at the Taj Mahal hotel.

"He gave up his own life to save the others," Dutt said.

Authorities were yesterday shifting their focus to who was behind the attacks. A previously unknown Muslim group known as the Deccan Mujahideen has claimed responsibility. However, the use of at least 10 heavily armed and well-trained "fedayeen" bore the hallmarks of Pakistan-based militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba. Kasav, the militant reported to have been captured, confessed to being a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, newspapers said, but the group has denied any role in the attacks.

Indian officials said the sole surviving gunman was from Pakistan and pointed a finger of blame at their neighbour.

"According to preliminary information, some elements in Pakistan are responsible for the Mumbai terror attacks," India's foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, told reporters.

Pakistani prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani insisted his country was not involved. His government was sending an intelligence official to assist in the probe.

Several militants checked into the Taj in the weeks before the attack, gathering details of the hotel layout, several newspapers reported. They filmed some locations on scouting trips. Their rucksacks were packed to the brim with ammunition, six to seven magazine with 50 bullets each, and grenades. They had satellite phones, and credit cards. The attackers were well-prepared, carrying large bags of almonds to keep up their energy during a long siege. One backpack found contained 400 rounds of ammunition.

"These people were very, very familiar with the hotel layout and it appeared they had carried out a survey before," the chief of the Naval Commando Unit, told reporters. "A very determined lot, remorseless."

The Indian navy said it was investigating whether a trawler found drifting off the coast of Mumbai, with a bound corpse on board, was used in the attack.

Navy spokesman Captain Manohar Nambiar said the trawler, named Kuber, had been found on Thursday and brought to Mumbai. Officials said they believe the boat had sailed from a port in the neighbouring state of Gujarat.

Indian security officers believe many of the gunmen may have reached the city using a black and yellow rubber dinghy found near the site of the attacks.

On Friday, commandos killed the last two gunmen inside the luxury Oberoi hotel, where 24 bodies had been found, authorities said.

But in the most dramatic of the counterstrikes on Friday, masked Indian commandos rappelled from a helicopter to the rooftop of the Chabad Lubavitch Jewish centre. For nearly 12 hours, explosions and gunfire erupted from the five-storey building as the commandos fought their way downward, while thousands of people gathered behind barricades in the streets to watch. At one point, Indian forces fired a rocket at the building.

The bodies of New York rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, were found at the Jewish centre. Their son, Moshe, who turned two yesterday, was scooped up by an employee on Thursday as she fled the building. Two Israelis and another American were also killed in the house, said Rabbi Zalman Schmotkin, a spokesman for the Chabad Lubavitch movement, which ran the centre.

In the US, president-elect Barack Obama said he was closely monitoring the situation. "These terrorists who targeted innocent civilians will not defeat India's great democracy, nor shake the will of a global coalition to defeat them," he said in a statement.

India has been shaken repeatedly by terror attacks blamed on Muslim militants in recent years. Most were bombings striking crowded places – markets, street corners and parks. Mumbai, one of the most populous cities in the world with some 18 million people, was hit by a series of bombings in July 2006 that killed 187 people.

The latest attacks began on Wednesday at about 9.20pm with gunmen spraying fire across the Chhatrapati Shivaji railroad station, one of the world's busiest terminals. For the next two hours, there was an attack roughly every 15 minutes – the Jewish centre, a tourist restaurant, one hotel, then another, and two attacks on hospitals.