GODHRA, India (AP) - Police fired rifles, injuring six people, to halt a Hindu crowd trying to attack Muslim houses Thursday as violence spread across western Gujarat state after the mob-burning of a train that killed 58 people, mostly Hindus returning from a disputed religious site.
For hours, outnumbered police stood watching, or occasionally fired tear gas in the state's commercial center, Ahmadabad, as gangs of hundreds of people burned hotels, petrol pumps, cars, restaurants and shops. They made bonfires of the looted goods and blocked the roads.
Rioters killed three people, including a truck driver dragged from his vehicle, police said.
Officers fired tear gas to try to halt a Hindu mob descending on Muslim houses in the Meghanigar neighborhood. The crowd wouldn't stop, so police fired rifles, injuring six people, three of them seriously, officials at the Civil Hospital told The Associated Press.
Curfew was ordered in several parts of Ahmadabad as reports of rioting, with police taking little action, spread across a 185-mile swathe of Gujarat, from Rajkot to Godhra, where the train fire occurred. The Fire Brigade said 50 buildings had burned in Ahmadabad, most of them Muslim-owned.
The state government, run by the party of Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had supported a call by Hindu nationalists for a shutdown to protest Wednesday's train burning.
On the highway into Ahmadabad, village boys set up blockades, and roadside tea and tobacco stalls were burned to the ground.
Police were on alert across the country as the national government pleaded for restraint, fearful that sectarian violence could spread quickly in this nation of more than 1 billion, whose birth 54 years ago was marked by Hindu-Muslim-Sikh fighting that killed nearly a million people.
Arson and stone throwing was reported in many parts of Ahmadabad, as gangs of Hindu nationalists went through neighborhoods chanting, "Hail, Rama," in honor of one of their chief gods.
The Hindu groups threatened shopkeepers who had not closed in compliance with a strike call to protest Wednesday's train attack in Godhra, in which mostly Hindus were burned to death or suffocated from smoke. Fourteen children were among the dead, and 43 were injured, 20 of them requiring hospital treatment.
Police said 63 people, including two municipal councilors in Godhra, had been arrested on murder charges in the train attack.
The state's chief minister, Narendra Modi, a member of the prime minister's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, called the train burning an "organized terrorist attack" and said steps would be taken "so that no one dare repeat such a thing in future."
In three towns in the state, seven Muslims were stabbed to death overnight, and curfews were ordered.
On the 95-mile route from Godhra to Ahmadabad, roadside tobacco and tea stalls could be seen burned to the ground on Thursday. In village after village, boys barricaded the highway with tires and other debris, and only cars following police vehicles could edge their way through.
"Some 2,000 people came here around midnight, carrying petrol and kerosene and burned half a dozen shops belonging to Muslims, and a spice factory," said a police officer, J. Chaudhary, surveying the damage near the village of Udalpur. "The Muslim owners weren't there."
The violence began Wednesday when Muslim tea vendors and their neighbors in Godhra stoned a train carrying Hindu nationalists before setting it on fire. They killed 58 people, after slogan-chanting passengers refused to pay for snacks during a five-minute halt, the rail station chief, J.K. Katija, said Thursday.
Tension between Hindus and Muslims had been building for the last five years in Godhra and other towns in Gujarat, said police chief Raju Bhargava. The Hindu nationalists have traveled to and from a religious site in Ayodhya, where they vow to build a temple to the Hindu god Rama on the ruins of the 16th century Muslim mosque that Hindus tore down in 1992.
In subsequent nationwide riots, 2,000 people died.
Bhargava said the Hindu activists often refused to pay for food taken from Muslim vendors at the stations, and brandished sticks as they shouted slogans, causing resentment and anger to build up.
The activists have taken Hindu families with them, swelling the numbers in Ayodhya, in northern Uttar Pradesh state, as the March 15 deadline approaches when the World Hindu Council says it will begin erecting the Rama temple in defiance of the government and the courts.
Amarji Tiwari, 19, being treated Thursday for smoke inhalation at the Godhra hospital, was returning home with his family in the coach filled with Hindu activists, but said he had not been to Ayodhya.
"There was stoning first at the railway station," said Tiwari. "The train started moving, then it stopped. They threw petrol bombs and kerosene and the whole thing caught fire.
"I fainted for a moment from the smoke, but regained consciousness and crawled out," Tiwari said. "I handed my brother's 2-year-old son to a rescuer and my sister-in-law also came out. But my parents were burned to death."
Sixteen-year-old Gayatri Panchal saw her mother, father and two sisters die before her eyes in the train fire as they returned home from participating in a religious ceremony at Ayodhya.
"We were sleeping and I opened my eyes when I felt the heat. I saw flames everywhere. My mother was in flames, her clothes were on fire," she said. "Someone pulled me out of the compartment and then I saw my father's body being taken out. He was covered in black. Then I fainted."
Vajpayee, who has strongly supported the building of the temple, appealed to the World Hindu Council on Wednesday to call off the project in the interest of peace. He canceled a trip to Australia for the 54-nation Commonwealth summit.
Rajendra Singh, the state police superintendent in Uttar Pradesh, where the disputed Ayodhya site is located, said 3,000 paramilitary troops had been deployed, and the number would reach 10,000 by Thursday night.
No vehicle was moving in the town, where approximately 20,000 Hindu activists have gathered, praying and preparing to begin building the temple.