MUMBAI, India (AP):

India demanded Pakistan take "strong action" against those behind the 60-hour siege that left at least 172 people dead, as new details emerged yesterday about the gunmen and the survival training that enabled them to thwart Indian commandos.

The United States called on Pakistan to fully cooperate with investigations into the attack, which has strained relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.

Removal of bodies

Soldiers removed the last victims' bodies from the shattered Taj Mahal hotel yesterday, searching each room in the labyrinthine building and defusing booby-traps and bombs left by the gunmen.

The sole known surviving attacker told police that his group trained for months in camps operated by Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan, learning close-combat techniques, hostage taking, handling of explosives, satellite navigation, and high-seas survival skills.

Lashkar was banned in Pakistan in 2002 under pressure from the US, a year after Washington and Britain listed it a terrorist group. It is since believed to have emerged under another name, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, though that group has denied links to the Mumbai attack.

Corpses rejected

Mumbai's most influential Muslim cemetery rejected the corpses of nine of the gunmen and said "Islam does not permit this sort of barbaric crime".

Pakistan's high commissioner to India was called to the foreign ministry and told that "elements from Pakistan" had carried out the attacks, ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash told reporters.

The commissioner was told that India "expects that strong action would be taken against those elements," Prakash said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Pakistan to "follow the evidence wherever it leads".

"This is a time for complete, absolute, total transparency and cooperation and that's what we expect," Rice said in London.

She said the perpetrators of attacks "must be brought to justice".

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari called the attackers "non-state actors", and warned against letting their actions lead to greater enmity in the region.