Five people were killed in a western Indian city today in clashes between Hindus and Muslims sparked off by protests against remarks by US pastor Jerry Falwell criticising the Prophet Mohammad, police said.
A senior police official said police opened fire on the clashing mobs after protesters set fire to shops and vehicles in the textile town of Solapur, 450 kmfrom the financial capital Bombay.
"Of the five who were killed, three died in police firing and we are investigating the cause of death of the other two," police sub-inspector DB Raut said over phone from Solapur. Police said 67 were injured.
Muslim groups had called for a strike today in protest against Mr Falwell's remarks, reported by a local Urdu language newspaper.
Mr Raut said trouble broke out when a group of Muslims asked Hindu shopkeepers to down shutters in the city's main market.
He said trouble soon spread across the town with mobs from both communities pelting each other with stones.
On Monday, shops, schools and businesses shut down in Srinagar, the main city of the Himalayan state of Kashmir, after local traders and social and religious activists called for a general strike to condemn Mr Falwell's comments.
The CBS news website had quoted Mr Falwell, a prominent member of the American Christian Right, as saying: "I think Mohammad was a terrorist".
"I read enough...by both Muslims and non-Muslims (to decide) that he was a violent man, a man of war," he was quoted as saying.
Police said a curfew had been imposed in Solapur till daybreak and added the situation was tense but under control.