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Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil resigned early today, in the wake of the brutal Islamist attacks in Mumbai according to Indian television reports.

Meanwhile, there were fears that more Britons may yet be found dead in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Bombay, hours after India commandos killed the three gunmen who were still holed up in the building to end one of the bloodiest terror strikes to hit India.

The coordinated attacks began on Wednesday night, when terrorists struck ten sites including two luxury hotels, a backpacker bar, a Jewish community centre, and Bombay's main train station.

Police had put the death toll at 195, but revised it down this morning to 174, including one Briton, with 239 more injured.

This morning, security forces were still combing the Taj, searching for unexploded ordnance and corpses. The first pictures of the interior of the building showed a scene of smashed glass and splintered woodwork.

Unexploded grenades littered the floor beside the hotel pool.

National Security Guard commandos said they discovered 30 bodies in a single room after storming the Taj Mahal hotel.

The British Deputy High Commissioner in Mumbai, Vicki Treadell, said she could not rule out further British fatalities.

Asked if she could confirm whether all British nationals were accounted for, she said: "I can't confirm that because the picture has yet to be clarified.

Indian security forces now believes that ten or eleven terrorists were involved in the attack. They are working on the assumption that the men sailed from Karachi in Pakistan before hijacking a fishing boat and slaying its crew about halfway to Bombay.

That fishing vessel was found adrift off the city shore with the body of one dead man, his throat slit, and a satellite phone aboard.

That the number of terrorist suspects has been dramatically lowered since Wednesday, when it was thought that there were about 25 gunmen, has triggered fears among the Bombay public that some terrorists may yet be at large. In the chaos of Wednesday night, police sources had said that several had escaped.

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