INDIA: Orders to shoot rioters on sight were issued yesterday in the Indian state of Gujarat. An indefinite curfew was imposed and army units were deployed to supress sectarian rioting in which nearly 300 people, mainly Muslims, have died. The official death toll was 136.
Buildings burned and smoke billowed from blazing cars, as crazed mobs of Hindus attacked and looted Muslim neighbourhoods, mosques and businesses for the third consecutive day in Gujarat's most prosperous city of Ahmadabad - in India's worst communal violence in over a decade.
In the most gruesome attack a Hindu mob burnt to death 58 Muslims, including eight children, as they slept in the shantytown of Narora on Ahmadabad's outskirts. This included a family of eight who were locked inside their jeep, sprinkled with kerosene and set alight, police said.
Gangs of Hindus armed with clubs and iron rods, hurled Molotov cocktails into houses and buildings and the smoke from the smouldering structures darkened Ahmadabad's skyline.
Streets were littered with stones, flaming tyres and debris from looted stores and homes and an acrid smell of smoke hung in the city's air, eyewitnesses said.
Meanwhile, the radical World Hindu Council at the heart of the religious dispute responsible for the violence, said it was willing to delay by three months its March 15th deadline to build the controversial temple to Lord Ram on the site of a razed mosque at Ayodhya in northern India.
But Acharaya Giriraj Kishore said the council's deferment would require the government to allow it to erect two holy pillars destined for the temple adjacent to the disputed site that is also claimed as holy by Muslims.
Rioting erupted in Gujarat after a suspected Muslim mob attacked a train packed with Hindu activists at Godhra, 90 miles east of Ahmadabad on Wednesday, burning alive 58 people, including women and 14 children.
The victims were returning from Ayodhya, where thousands of nationalist Hindus have gathered to build the Ram temple in place of the demolished 16th century mosque built by a Mogul king. The mosque was torn down in 1992 by a Hindu mob, believing it was built over Ram's exact birth spot. This led to countrywide riots in which over 2,000 people were killed.
Terrified Muslims scurried through Ahmadabad's alleyways heading for the safety of neighbourhoods populated by their community. Many died en route. "They [the Muslims\] have to be driven out of this country. Only then will we be able to live in peace," housewife, Ms Jyotsana Behn Rawal, said. Muslims form about 13 per cent in India's majority Hindu population of more than one billion.
A scared, ill-equipped and hopelessly outnumbered police force stood by helplessly watching the carnage. In many instances armed policemen were unwilling to even try and control the rioters. "My head hangs in shame," Mr Prashant Chandra Pande, Ahmadabad's police commissioner said of his force's inability to control rioting in the city with a population of over 3.5 million. He also conceded that his predominantly Hindu force was biased.