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AHMADABAD, INDIA, April 22, 2002: Two people were killed Monday in religious strife between Hindus and Muslims in western India, bring to 20 the number of dead in two days of clashes. At least 105 have been injured since Sunday. Several neighborhoods in Ahmadabad, the commercial hub of the state of Gujarat, were under siege Monday as Hindus and Muslims clashed and set homes and businesses on fire. Two Muslim men were killed in Ahmadabad. One was stabbed to death by a Hindu throng and the other died after a mob pelted him with stones, police said. An assistant commissioner of police, Keshav Kumar, said 14 people suffered bullet wounds when police opened fire to disperse a mob in Ahmedabad’s old walled city of Shahpur. Those killed Sunday included 10 Muslims in Ahmadabad, when police fired into a swelling crowd on the Hindu festival of Ramnavami, the birthday of the religion’s supreme deity, Rama. Eight other people were killed in clashes between the two groups — including at least three Hindus. At least 91 people were seriously injured Sunday with burns and bullet wounds, police said. The two days of violence raised the death toll from India’s worst religious rioting in a decade to 853. Some police officers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the firing at Muslims was a reaction to the killing of a police officer, who was stabbed by Muslims in the crowd.

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