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Saturday, 4, March, 2006 (03, Safar, 1427)

 
Three Killed in Riots Sparked by Bush Trip
Agencies
 

LUCKNOW, 4 March 2006 — Three people were killed and several injured yesterday when protests in northern India against US President George W. Bush’s visit turned into street riots between Hindus and Muslims, officials said.

Police used tear gas and truncheons to break up violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state, police told AFP. “Two of those killed are Hindus and one is a Muslim,” said local government official Ghulam Abbas.

Two of the victims were shot dead, one of them a 15-year-old girl, while the third man died in hospital after sustaining a gunshot wound, Abbas said. Seventeen others had been admitted to hospital with injuries, he added.

Earlier police chief Ashutoch Pandey said the riots had been sparked by anti-Bush protests. “Muslims after offering prayers went around ordering shops to down their shutters to protest President Bush’s visit to India which sparked off the clashes because the Hindus objected,” Pandey said.

The rioters, brandishing sticks and hurling stones and firebombs, damaged automobiles, torched two-wheelers and set fire to an unspecified number of shops in Lucknow’s Ameenabad commercial district, witnesses said.

“The rioting started in Ameenabad and spread to the Muslim quarters of Lucknow,” a police official said, citing reports he received on his wireless radio. The rioting also spread to the city’s upscale Hazratganj district where protesters smashed store windows and looted goods after setting fire to vehicles abandoned by shoppers, he said.

“The violence spread like wildfire and we have now slapped prohibitory orders across the city banning gatherings of more than five people,” an official said. Pandey said police were using tear gas grenades to disperse rioters, many of whom were seen carrying anti-Bush posters.

Demonstrations were also organized in other cities, including Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh, by Muslim bodies opposed to US foreign policy and the US-led campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Hyderabad in southern India, which Bush visited during the day, also witnessed violent protests. There were reports of protests from several states in India, including the northern Jammu and Kashmir, western Gujarat and southern Tamil Nadu states. A complete shutdown was observed in Kashmir.

Police said five people were injured in clashes between riot police and Muslims opposed to his visit outside Hyderabad’s Makkah Mosque. The clashes occurred after Friday prayers ended and some among the congregation of about 5,000 began throwing stones at police. Police wielding batons pushed the crowd back into the mosque, from where many continued throwing stones, shoes and plastic bottles. Some protesters also burned an effigy of Bush on the street.

Two separate protests earlier drew a combined crowd of about 5,000, organizers and witnesses said. No shops opened in the business center after Muslim leaders called for the city to be brought to a standstill in protest at Bush’s visit.

Police overnight slapped a ban on the flying of kites and balloons, which Muslim activists had said they would fly bearing anti-Bush slogans as part of their protest against US policies in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, a separatist alliance in Indian Kashmir urged Bush yesterday to push nuclear-armed India and Pakistan to demilitarize their zones of scenic Kashmir. “The US president should prevail upon the governments of India and Pakistan to demilitarize the entire Jammu and Kashmir,” said the moderate wing of the separatist alliance All Parties Hurriyat Conference in a statement.

 

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