Violence raged in India's western Gujarat state today as the Prime Minister appealed for peace while sending in fresh troops to quell the country's worst religious bloodshed in a decade.
Despite the deployment of thousands of heavily armed soldiers to reinforce overstretched police in Gujarat, 35 people were burned alive in two separate clashes between Hindus and Muslims.
The death toll is nearing 300 from four days of violence sparked when a suspected Muslim mob on Wednesday set fire to a train carrying Hindu devotees, burning 58 mostly women and children to death.
"Whatever the provocation, people should maintain peace and exercise restraint," Prime Minister Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee said in a nationally broadcast address calling for peace.
"The burning alive of people, including women and children... is a blot on the country's face."
But on the streets, some members of the country's Hindu majority shunned his words. "Learn from us how to burn Muslims," said chilling graffiti on a wall in Naroda on the outskirts of Gujurat's capital Ahmedabad.
After three days of violence, there was hardly a home or mosque left untouched by violence in the town's Muslim quarter.
"There are times when the country is put to test," Mr Vajpayee said. "Such a situation has been created today because of the violence in Gujarat."
At least 27 people were burned alive today in a predominantly Muslim village and eight more when a mob torched a Muslim-owned bakery.
Gujarat authorities have rounded up about 1,200 people since the killings began, but seem so far to have prevented the violence spreading much beyond Gujarat's state borders.