KOLKATA, March 16: More than 50 people were injured in clashes across the Indian state of West Bengal on Friday sparked by the killing of 14 villagers trying to stop their land being taken for industrial parks.

The state was crippled by a general strike called by opposition parties, with thousands of security force personnel deployed to control angry protesters and rival supporters of the eastern state's ruling Communist party.

“Protesters have smashed a number of commuter buses and set up roadblocks,” Bengal's inspector general of police Raj Kanojia said in state capital Kolkata.

At least 110 people were taken into custody and many protesters tried to torch government offices, police said.

“It's wrong -- the government has killed so many people in cold blood,” said housewife Aparna Dutta, part of a 1,000-strong crowd protesting outside the house of state chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in Kolkata.

The one-day strike, called by an opposition alliance led by the regional Trinamool Congress party, came two days after police fired on villagers opposed to the compulsory purchase of farmland for a special economic zone (SEZ).

Police said they fired in self-defence as a mob hurled stones and homemade bombs. Some 71 people were injured, including policemen, in Nandigram, 120 kilometres south of Kolkata. Wednesday's unrest was the bloodiest yet over state government plans to buy land in Nandigram to set up an SEZ chemical industry hub backed by the Salim Group, an Indonesian conglomerate.

In January, protests over the project, in which 11 people died, led the federal government to suspend plans for scores of SEZs -- privately run enclaves with world-class infrastructure and tax breaks that are seen as central to India's drive to boost economic growth and draw foreign investment. The protests have piled pressure on the federal government to review its policy on SEZs, of which there are so far 14 in operation in India.

In Friday's strike action, schools, colleges, shops and offices shut down across the state, virtually emptying the streets of usually bustling Kolkata. Train services were severely disrupted as protesters squatted on railway tracks. Flights were operating although people arriving in Kolkata airport were stranded without any onward transport, officials said.

State chief minister Bhattacharjee, who has won kudos abroad for his investment-friendly stance, said police had been ordered to go to Nandigram “because there had been no rule of the law (there)... for the past two-and-a-half months.” Nandigram had been a no-go area for authorities since the January violence.

The protests were the latest in a wave of demonstrations nationwide against SEZs.

There is widespread debate over whether farmland should be used for industry in India, where some two-thirds of the billion-plus population live off agriculture.

An editorial in the left-leaning Hindu newspaper noted “the militant protesters (at Nandigram)... were clearly spoiling for a confrontation with the state administration.

“What needs explaining is why the state government allowed the situation to reach this pass,” it said. While the state government had promised not to take away land without consent, “this message does not appear to have percolated down.” “A greater commitment to transparency might also have helped,” it noted.—AFP