AHMEDABAD, India

At least five people were killed, three in police firing, in religious violence in the riot-ravaged western state of Gujarat, police said on Saturday.

A senior police official told Reuters, three people were killed when police fired to disperse clashing groups of Hindus and Muslims and two people were stabbed to death in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's largest commercial city.

Ahmedabad bore the burnt of the wave of religious mayhem, which swept through the state after a train carrying Hindu activists was torched, killing 59 people in late February.

Authorities imposed an indefinite curfew in Watva and Sabarmati areas of Ahmedabad city. Curfew has been clamped in 30 areas in the state, which bore the country's worst religious bloodshed in a decade.

Sporadic violence has continued even after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee made an anguished plea during visit to the state on Thursday to end the bloodletting and "stop the poison of religious violence".

Official estimates put the death toll at 825, mostly Muslims, but non-government groups say it could be more than 2,000.
Opposition groups have demanded that Vajpayee sack the state's chief minister, Narendra Modi, to restore trust among Muslims.

Critics of turning a blind eye to the bloodletting when it was at its peak and not doing enough to control the mayhem have accused Modi. Modi has denied the accusations.

India's human rights watch dog, the National Human Rights Commission has faulted Modi's government for "a serious failure of intelligence."


[photo image: Muslim victim in Gujarat, March/April 200