The death toll in three days of religious rioting in India has risen to nearly 200, including 58 Hindus who died in an arson attack on a train.
The unrest is the worst in India in a decade.
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An Indian Muslim man stranded on the first floor of his house and surrounded by Hindu rioters begs to police to rescue him in Ahmedabad Photo: Reuters
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Eyewitnesses said more than 2,000 people armed with iron rods, knives and hockey sticks were involved in a pitched battle in an open area between two residential compounds in Ahmedabad city.
Several Muslims were burned alive as Hindu mobs went on a rampage of revenge yesterday, killing dozens of people and destroying property.
The army has been deployed in the western state of Gujarat to quell the bloodshed, which began when a suspected Muslim mob set fire to a train carrying Hindu devotees in the town of Godhra on Wednesday, burning alive 58 people, mostly women and children.
The victims in the train inferno were returning from a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) religious vigil in the northern town of Ayodhya in support of plans by the hardline Hindu group to build a temple on a disputed site holy to both Hindus and Muslims.
In 1992, Hindus razed a 16th century mosque there, triggering nationwide riots that killed about 3,000 people in the worst religious violence since the Indian subcontinent was partitioned into mostly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan in 1947.
The VHP called for a strike in parts of India today in protest against the train killings. Demonstrators disrupted transport in India's commercial hub, Bombay, where mobs stoned buses, injuring several people.
The bloodshed and the strike sent jitters through financial markets a day after the government released its 2002/03 budget to mixed reviews. Bond and foreign exchange trading was thin, with the rupee slipping. But stocks rebounded slightly in early trade after falling four per cent yesterday.
AFP &