AHMEDABAD, July 26: Curfew was clamped on Monday in Veraval town in the Indian state of Gujarat after two people were killed and shops set on fire by a Hindu mob protesting a woman being allegedly harassed by Muslim men, police said.
Local police chief B.D. Vaghela told AFP that tension "spread like lightining" through several riot-scarred neighbourhoods of Veraval town, some 320 kilometres southwest of Ahmedabad.
"There has been large-scale arson in which 40 to 50 shops have been burnt down by the rampaging Hindu mob," said Vaghela, adding that police resorted to firing tear gas shells to disperse the mob targeting Muslim neighbourhoods.
He said the two people were killed in the rioting. Gujarat has suffered sporadic religious clashes since 2002, when it was convulsed by India's worst religious riots in nearly a decade.
Authorities have rushed in additional police forces to defuse the violence in the port town of Veraval. "Initial reports are not worrisome. But we are not taking any chances," said state police chief A.K. Bhargav.
More than 1,000 people, most of them Muslim, died in Gujarat in 2002 Hindu-Muslim riots. Non-government groups put the toll in that violence at more than 2,500. -AFP/Reuters
