With the battle for Bombay finally drawing to a close last night, India’s Government faced criticism at home and abroad over its failure to prevent the attacks, and over its courageous but haphazard response.

Indians are used to their Government’s chaotic approach to security but the first terrorist attack on their soil to target foreigners on such a large scale has exposed it to international scrutiny for the first time.

India’s media led the charge, panning the country’s intelligence and security agencies for failing to anticipate the attack, as well as a series of multiple bomb attacks on Indian cities this year.

“Mumbai Maimed, Nation Shamed” read a headline in the Mail Today newspaper.

“How many blasts, how many attacks, how many AK47s, how many hand grenades does a country have to face?” asked Prannoy Roy, the president and chief anchorman of NDTV. “If ever there was a watershed, it is now.”

Indian security experts said that India lacked the capacity to combat terrorism because of bickering between political leaders who did not appreciate the scale of the threat. “At the level of officers and personnel, they have been exemplary, exhibiting both courage and leadership from the front,” Ajay Sahni, a terrorism expert at Delhi’s Institute for Conflict Management, told The Times.

“But at the level of Government and institutional structures, it’s been abysmal,” he said.

“Too much time has been taken and the capacities for response are so deficient that it is impossible to expect a better response.”

The lack of planning and intelligence-gathering by Indian forces could have led to fatal mistakes, Israeli defence officials said. The Indian commandos had carried out a “botched operation” on the Chabad centre, said one Israeli defence official.

“Several times they believed they had control of the area, and then fresh gunfire broke out. They did not know the threat they were confronting.”

Hemant Karkare, the head of the Maharashtra state police’s antiterrorism squad, was shot dead by the militants on Wednesday night. Even after the last hostages were freed, security forces took several hours to hunt down gunmen in the hotels.

Indian police struggled to control the crowds of onlookers around the Jewish centre where commandos spent more than 12 hours fighting militants yesterday. Five Israeli hostages were killed. Ehud Barak, Israel’s Defence Minister, had offered India assistance in rescuing the hostages but was turned down.

Britain sent a hostage negotiator and a forensic science expert from the Metropolitan Police on Thursday but they too have not been asked for help, according to Indian officials.

Some Western officials said that they were surprised and frustrated at India’s approach to counter-terrorism, given its experience of the problem dating back to independence in 1947.

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