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Fifty five people killed after express train is torched
At least 55 people, including 14 children, have been killed after an express train carrying Hindu activists was set on fire by a mob in a Muslim-dominated area of the western Indian state of Gujarat.
As sectarian tensions rose in the wake of the attack, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee appealed for calm and stressed that national security would be maintained at all costs.
Officials say around 80 people were injured, some of them with severe burns.
The activists on the train were returning from Uttar Pradesh state, where thousands of right-wing Hindus have been gathering in defiance of court orders to build a temple on the ruins of a mosque, razed by Hindu zealots in 1992.
Their train was halted just after leaving Godhra station around 160 kilometers east of the Gujarat state capital Ahmedabad.
An indefinite curfew was imposed in the area and police were issued with shoot-on-sight orders, as reports came in of sporadic sectarian clashes in various areas of the state.
28/02/2002 06:07:06 | ABC Radio Australia News
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