246 killed as Hindus continue anti-Muslim rampage

At least 246 people are now known to have died in two days of rioting by Hindu nationalists in the western Indian state of Gujarat.

Rampaging Hindu mobs burned at least 52 Muslims, including eight children, to death in a shantytown on the outskirts of Ahmadabad, while eight Muslims, all members of the same family, were burned alive in their car after a mob set it alight. Police said two women, two children and four men were in the car at the time of the attack.

Earlier, 38 Muslims, including at least 12 children, died when 2,000 Hindus torched six bungalows in the Meghaninagar neighbourhood. In Bombay, a train carrying thousands of passengers was derailed when somebody placed concrete blocks on the tracks, but no injuries were reported.

This latest wave of sectarian violence was sparked when a mob of Muslims set fire to a train carrying Hindu activists in Godhra, a town in Gujarat state, on Wednesday.

58 Hindu nationalists campaigning for the construction of a temple on the ruins of a 16th-century mosque were killed in the attack. Police in Ahmadabad were given shoot-on-sight orders today, but this has failed to stop the violence in the city, which has 3.5 million inhabitants.

Tensions have been growing between Muslims and Hindus in western India because of the World Hindu Council’s plans to build a temple next month on the site of mosque demolished by Hindus in 1992.

The government has called for calm, fearing bloodshed could spread quickly in the nation of more than one billion people, where sectarian clashes killed nearly a million people after the country achieved independence from Britain in 1947.