Police released the names of the nine gunmen killed in last month’s attack on Mumbai and listed their home towns in Pakistan yesterday, stepping up the pressure on the Pakistani authorities to crack down on the militants allegedly responsible.

Pakistan, meanwhile, raided another five militant sites and detained 20 more suspects but refused to extradite any of those it has arrested to India, promising to try them on its own soil instead.

Pakistan’s Government also gave warning that, while it did not want war with India, it was ready to defend itself in case of another conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbours, who have fought three wars since independence in 1947.

The identity of the gunmen and their handlers is at the core of a tense diplomatic stand-off between the two countries, which almost went to a fourth war in 2002 after Pakistani militants attacked India’s Parliament.

Indian officials say that the Mumbai attack was planned and executed by Pakistani militants from Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group that attacked its Parliament and has links to Pakistan’s intelligence service. Pakistan has asked repeatedly for proof.

Rakesh Maria, the joint commissioner of Mumbai police, who is leading the investigation, attempted to do that yesterday when he listed the nine dead gunmen’s names and aliases, as well as the districts and towns in Pakistan where they lived. He also showed reporters photographs of eight of the men, withholding a picture of the ninth because his body was too badly burnt. He did not say how he had established their home towns but police have been interrogating the one gunman who was captured during the Mumbai attacks.

They have identified him as Azam Amir Kasab, 24, from the village of Faridkot in Pakistan’s central province of Punjab. Pakistani authorities denied any record of such a person initially but locals have revealed that he was indeed from Faridkot. Pakistan launched a crackdown on LeT on Sunday, arresting at least eight militants in a raid on a camp in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

Among those arrested was Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, LeT’s operations chief and the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, according a senior Pakistani official.

Ahmad Mukhtar, Pakistan’s Defence Minister, said that Maulana Masood Azhar, head of the Jaish-e-Mohammed militant group, had also been detained. Azhar was captured by Indian security forces in Indian-controlled Kashmir in 1995 but freed in 1999 in exchange for more than 160 passengers on board a hijacked Indian Airlines plane.

India has demanded that Pakistan extradite 20 terror suspects, believed to include Lakhvi, Azhar and Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, LeT’s founder. That demand, however, was rejected categorically by Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister. “The arrests are being made for our own investigations. Even if allegations are proved against any suspect, he will not be handed over to India,” he said. “We will proceed against those arrested under Pakistani laws.”

There was no immediate official response from India but officials and analysts told The Times that they did not expect Pakistan’s weak civilian Government to extradite the suspects for fear of provoking a domestic political backlash.

They also said that India’s Government was under less pressure to react militarily to the Mumbai attacks after a poor showing by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in state elections.

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