Hindu rioters kill 38 Muslims in retaliation for train attack

Associated Press

AHMADABAD, India — A crowd of Hindus set fire to Muslim homes Thursday and burned to death 38 people inside, 12 of them children, amid riots in retaliation for a Muslim attack on a train, police said.

Some 2,000 rioters stoned six Muslim-owned bungalows in a mostly Hindu neighborhood of Ahmadabad, then poured kerosene on them and set them ablaze, said P.B. Gondya, the deputy commissioner of police.

"We have taken out 18 bodies," Joint Commissioner of Police M.K. Tandon said.

He said officers saw the bodies of 12 children and 10 adults still lying inside the smoldering remains of the homes in Ahmadabad’s Meghaninagar neighborhood.

The deaths brought the toll in rioting throughout western Gujarat state on Thursday to at least 58 as Hindus attacked Muslims in retaliation for a Muslim attack on a train Wednesday, in which 58 people died, most of them Hindus.

Police were alerted to the Meghaninagar fires by the calls of a former Parliament member who lived in one of the burning homes. But it took police two hours — and firefighters six hours — to get to the site because of road blockades set up by Hindu rioters in Ahmadabad, police said.

"This happened due to mob violence and our men could not reach there on time. This is not an excuse but it is an extremely unfortunate incident," said Ahmadabad Police Commissioner P.C. Pandey.

Police said the former parliamentarian, Ehsan Jefri, fired a gun into the air when some 200 Hindus gathered around the Muslim homes, trying to disperse them. The crowd then swelled and attacked the houses. Jefri was among the dead, police said.

Rioters set fire to more than 50 buildings in Ahmadabad, most of them Muslim-owned. Hindu gangs also rioted in more than two dozen other towns in Gujarat state amid a strike called to protest Wednesday’s train attack.