After returning to the White House from Camp David, President Bush made brief remarks on Saturday about the deadly attacks in Mumbai, which left at least 195 people dead, including six Americans. While friends and colleagues of the Americans killed expressed shock and sorrow, Bush pledged full support to India from the US in investigations relating to the attacks.

Expressing his condolences for the victims, Bush, in his first statement on the attacks, said before television cameras: “We pledge the full support of the United States as India investigates these attacks, brings the guilty to justice and sustains its democratic way of life. The killers who struck this week are brutal and violent, but terror will not have the final word.”

Bush called the attacks an assault on human dignity. He added that India, the world’s largest democracy, can count on the United States, the world’s oldest democracy, to stand behind it. In fact, US officials were examining the fall-out on India-Pakistan relations, and who was behind the carefully organized assaults.

Bush also said that president-elect Barack Obama, who takes office on January 20, is being kept informed of the latest developments. A US counter-terrorism official told AFP that a militant group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, possibly Lashkar-e-Taiba, may have been responsible for the deadly wave of attacks.

As efforts continued in Mumbai to account for Americans and others still missing in the attacks, on websites and in interviews, mourners grappled with how several of the US victims had met such a violent end when they had devoted their lives to spiritual work with peaceful goals.