Violence Flares in Gujarat on Eve of Pm's Visit

India's prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, is expected to visit the western state of Gujarat today for the first time since the region was engulfed by violent rioting, amid signs that a new wave of communal killing has begun.

Two rioters were reportedly shot dead by police yesterday as officers intervened to disperse about 5,000 Hindus and Muslims fighting in the Gomtipur area of the state's biggest city, Ahmedabad. About 20 more rioters were injured.

The clashes came a day after a Hindu mob burned to death five Muslims late on Tuesday night in Abhsana, 50 miles from the state's largest city, Ahmedabad.

Police said that the charred remains of the victims, who included two women and a child, were found yesterday by firefighters.

More than 40 Muslims were taken to hospital after the mob surrounded and set fire to three houses, said Vikas Sahay, a local police superintendent.

Mr Vajpayee's two-day trip to inspect the carnage follows weeks of smouldering tension between the state's Hindu and Muslim communities.

About 2,000 people, most of them Muslims, died in last month's riots - the worst in India for ten years.

The violence was again evident yesterday in Ahmedabad, where stone-throwing mobs clashed.

The prime minister has expressed dismay at the riots, but he has failed to sack the state's controversial rightwing chief minister, Narender Modi, who is accused of failing to stop Hindu gangs slaughtering Muslims.

Earlier this week India's most influential human rights body, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) accused Mr Modi of "failing to protect life" and said his government was guilty of a "serious failure of intelligence and action".The commission also called on India's Central Bureau of Investigation to hold an inquiry into the massacres, which began when Muslims set fire to a train carrying Hindu activists in the town of Godhra, killing 58 people.

Hundreds of Muslims were burned and stabbed to death in revenge attacks by Hindu gangs.

The chief minister has so far cut an unrepentant figure in the face of overwhelming accusations that he runs a partisan administration and that he instructed his police force to do nothing as Hindu mobs killed Muslims and burned down their property.

Mr Modi's response has been to remove from their jobs the few police officers who tried to intervene.

Mr Modi belongs to the same Hindu nationalist party as Mr Vajpayee: the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP. While the killings have provoked a wave of soul-searching among secular Indians, many in the BJP believe the riots could revive the party's flagging fortunes. India's hardline home minister, LK Advani, has even defended Mr Modi. Ominously, the violence is now spreading to areas that remained peaceful last month, including the district of Kutch, where a mob of about 1,000 Hindus went on the rampage on Tuesday.

The recent attacks have left some 100,000 Muslims homeless and have turned parts of Ahmedabad into war zones.

Mr Vajpayee is expected to visit two relief camps where Muslims have been sheltering. Mr Modi has so far failed to visit any of the camps and has extended little or no help to Muslim refugees.

In its preliminary report, the NHRC also lambasted the chief minister's decision to offer the families of Hindu victims who died at Godhra twice as much compensation as Muslims killed in the subsequent riots. This was indicative of a "deeper malaise", it said.