Gunmen Not From Uk, Says Foreign Office

British officials last night played down the possibility that Britons were involved in the attacks on Mumbai.

India's first minister was reported to have claimed that two of the arrested gunmen were British-born Pakistanis, and UK authorities quickly said they were investigating the reports.

But the Foreign Office later said the deputy high commissioner in Mumbai had spoken to Indian authorities who said there was no evidence that any of the terrorists, shot or detained, were British.

A spokeswoman said: "The Indian chief minister has said no such thing privately or publicly."

Intelligence sources added that they had seen nothing to suggest that the claim, attributed to the chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, was correct.

Earlier in the day the home secretary, Jacqui Smith told reporters: "I think it's important that we make judgments on this on the basis of actually the fullest possible knowledge and intelligence, and that's obviously what we are working on at the moment." British authorities had "no knowledge" of anyone with a UK passport being among the gunmen who had been either killed or captured, she added.

Gordon Brown, the prime minister, said he would be discussing the attacks with India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh. But he added: "I would not want to be drawn into early conclusions about this. There is so much information still to be discovered and made available."

British anti-terrorist officers are liaising with their Indian counterparts, and officers are now in Mumbai.

A German MEP caught up in the attacks said she had heard that British nationals were among the terrorists involved in the killings in Mumbai. Erika Mann, part of a trade delegation of MEPs from Brussels staying at the Taj hotel, said she had escaped through an underground passage. She said: "We have heard from journalists and other people we were with that English citizens took part in the attacks and were killed in the hotel."