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| Friday, 1 March 2002 |
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Police open fire as mobs go on rampage after train attack AHMEDABAD, India, Feb 28 (AFP) - Police here used gunfire and tear gas Thursday to control hundreds of Hindus targeting Muslim-owned shops after an attack on a train which left 58 people dead, witnesses said. Police in the western Indian city fired over the heads of the crowds as they threw stones, tried to break into shops and loot them or set them on fire, witnesses said. The train was attacked on Wednesday just outside the town of Godhra, a Muslim-dominated area in the western state of Gujarat, 160 kilometers (100 miles) east of Ahmedabad. It was carrying Hindu activists who were returning from the town of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh state, where thousands of Hindus have been gathering in defiance of court orders to build a temple on the ruins of a 16th-century mosque razed by Hindu zealots in 1992. Around 6,000 police have been deployed on the streets of Ahmedabad. "We are expecting repercussions following Wednesday's train incident and are fully geared up to control the situation," the city's assistant commissioner of police, M.T. Mehta, told AFP. He said there was a heavy police presence in the city districts of Shahapur and Dariyagaj, which are prone to communal violence. |
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