MUMBAI, India (AP) – Though scarred and traumatized by last week’s terrorist attacks, this crowded, hyperactive city of 18 million cannot stay shut down for long.

Schools and businesses reopened Monday in Mumbai as residents of India’s financial engine struggled to come to terms with the bloodshed.

“Mumbai is always like that. You can’t stop Mumbai,” said Vijay Raghav, a 25-year-old systems manager. “Had it happened in any other city in India, people would have shut down for two weeks at least. But Mumbai is unstoppable.”

As Mumbai returned to normal to some degree, India demanded that Pakistan take “strong action” against those behind the deadly attacks, and Washington pressured Islamabad to cooperate with the investigation.

The only known surviving attacker told police that his group trained for months in camps operated by a banned Pakistani militant group, learning close-combat techniques, explosives training and other tactics for their three-day siege.

Teams from the FBI and Britain’s Scotland Yard met with top Indian police as they prepared to help collect evidence, a police official said.

Soldiers removed the remaining bodies from the shattered Taj Mahal hotel, where the standoff finally ended Saturday morning, with at least 172 people dead and 239 wounded. The army had already cleared other siege sites, including the five-star Oberoi hotel and the Mumbai headquarters of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group.

The mourning was not over, however. The curb outside Leopold Cafe and Bar, one of the 10 attack sites, dripped with wax from flickering memorial candles. It reopened in the late afternoon and was soon packed.

Parents dropped their children off at school and shopkeepers opened for the first time since the attacks, which Indian authorities blamed on the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The city had virtually shut down during the attacks, with many people scared to leave their homes.

The 60-hour attack, apparently carried out by 10 gunmen, exposed glaring weakness in India’s security forces and police. In the past two days, the country’s top law enforcement official has resigned and two top state officials have offered to quit amid growing criticism that the attackers appeared better trained, better coordinated and better armed than police.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh promised to strengthen maritime and air security and look into creating a new federal investigative agency.

While the cross-border rhetoric between Pakistan and India has increased since the attacks, both countries – by their often-antagonistic standards – carefully refrained from making statements that could quickly lead to a buildup of troops along their heavily militarized frontier.

In India, Pakistan’s high commissioner to the country met with Foreign Ministry officials and was told that “elements from Pakistan” had carried out the attacks, said ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash. His phrasing, though, carefully avoided blaming the Pakistani government.

The commissioner was told that India “expects that strong action would be taken against those elements,” Prakash said.

India’s demands were reinforced by the United States as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who will visit India later this week, said the perpetrators of attacks “must be brought to justice.”

Pakistan must “follow the evidence wherever it leads,” she said during a visit in London. “This is a time for complete, absolute, total transparency and cooperation, and that’s what we expect.”

Pakistan has repeatedly insisted it was not behind the attacks. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said Monday the gunmen were “non-state actors,” and warned against letting their actions lead to greater regional enmity.

“Such a tragic incident must bring opportunity rather than the defeat of a nation,” Zardari told Arj television. “We don’t think the world’s great nations and countries can be held hostage by non-state actors.”

Pakistan said its foreign secretary “condemned the barbaric attacks” and again pledged his country’s cooperation during a meeting Monday with India’s high commissioner in Islamabad.

The sole surviving attacker, Ajmal Qasab, told police that his group trained over about six months in camps operated by Lashkar in Pakistan, learning close-combat techniques, hostage-taking, handling of explosives, satellite navigation, and high-seas survival skills, according to two Indian security officials familiar with the investigation. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the details.

Lashkar was banned in Pakistan under pressure from the U.S. in 2002, a year after Washington and Britain listed it a terrorist group. It is since believed to have emerged under another name, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, although that group has denied links to the Mumbai attack.

Qasab told investigators the militants hijacked an Indian vessel and killed three crew members, keeping the captain alive long enough to guide them into Mumbai, the two security officials said.

The men, ages 18-28, then came ashore in a dinghy at two different Mumbai areas before slipping into the city in two teams, officials said. The gunmen struck at several sites, including a train station, where they mowed down police and passers-by; the Jewish center; and the two luxury hotels, representing the city’s wealth and tourism, reportedly seeking out Westerners.

A Muslim cemetery rejected the corpses of the nine dead gunmen and its officials said “Islam does not permit this sort of barbaric crime.”

“People who committed this heinous crime cannot be called Muslim,” said Hanif Nalkhande, a trustee of the influential Jama Masjid Trust, which runs the 7½-acre Badakabrastan graveyard in downtown Mumbai.

While some Muslim scholars disagreed with the decision – saying Islam requires a proper burial for every Muslim – the city’s other Muslim graveyards are likely to do the same.

Among the 19 foreigners killed were six Americans. The dead also included Germans, Canadians, Israelis and nationals from Britain, Italy, Mexico, Japan, China, Thailand, Australia, Singapore and Mexico.

At the Jewish center, Israeli emergency workers sorted through the shattered glass and splintered furniture to gather the victims’ remains. At one point, one of the men opened a prayer book amid the rubble and stopped to pray.

Indian officials said their country would persevere.

“This is a threat to the very idea of India, the very soul of India,” said Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, the country’s top law enforcement official. “Ultimately the idea of India – that is a secular, plural, tolerant and open society – will triumph.”