New Delhi - Elite commandos ended a 59-hour siege of Mumbai Saturday by killing three terrorists holed up inside the Taj hotel and capturing one alive after coordinated attacks by the gunmen across the city killed nearly 150 people, officials said.

"The hotel is under our control," JK Dutt, chief of the National Security Guard commandos, said after fierce combat that began early in the morning and lasted nearly five hours.

"The commandos killed three terrorists after an intense gunbattle inside the hotel," Dutt said, adding that some automatic rifles, pistols and live grenades were recovered from inside the Taj.

One commando was killed during the assault in the 565-room hotel in which 200 national security guards were involved.

Through Friday night, the terrorists engaged in intermittent battles with the attackers at different places on the first and ground floor of the Taj.

Dutt said terrorists had set fires at different places in the hotel as diversionary tactics whenever they found the forces closing in on them.

"There was a lot of shooting. Grenades were lobbed and explosives were used by terrorists," he said.

The security chief said operations would be declared over only after the conclusion of room-to-room searches to ensure that there were no remaining terrorists or live explosives inside the hotel.

"We are also looking for surviving guests who could have locked themselves in rooms and have not been coming out for fear of terrorists," he said.

A group of 20 to 22 militants who reached the shores of Mumbai by boat unleashed a wave of attacks across India's commercial capital beginning Wednesday night that killed at least 148 people and injured 327, the IANS news agency reported. At least 16 foreigners died and 24 others were injured.

The gunmen seized the Taj Hotel as well as the Oberoi-Trident hotel and a Jewish centre in southern Mumbai Wednesday night.

On Friday, the National Security Guard along with commandos from the military succeeded in ending the militants' siege at the Oberoi-Trident hotel and the Jewish centre, by killing two militants in each operation.

At least 30 bodies were found at the hotel, 20 of whom were massacred in one of the restaurants, officials said. Five hostages were murdered by militants at the Jewish centre.

A previously unknown group calling itself the Decca Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the attacks - the worst in Mumbai since more than 180 people were killed in a series of bombings in 2006.

But Indian security agencies suspected the hand of Pakistan-based militant groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba in the carnage.

On Friday, Delhi blamed "elements" in Pakistan for the attacks.

Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told visiting Pakistani counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi that "outrages" like the Mumbai attack would make progress in the bilateral peace process "impossible."