AHMEDABAD, India, (AFP) — A new wave of Hindu-Muslim blood-letting yesterday pushed the death toll to 286 in western India, as troops patrolled Gujarat state to try and curb the rioting.

In a single village in Gujarat’s Panchamahal district, 30 Muslims, including women and children, were burned alive yesterday evening, district administrator Jayanti Ravi told AFP.

She said the fresh eruption of violence claimed the lives of 10 more Muslims in other villages of the troubled Panchmahal district.

Jayanti blamed the attacks on a Hindu mob and said the rioters numbering up to 3,000 searched one village cluster after another and attacked those which housed Muslims.

At least 188 people have died in clashes across Gujarat, police said, 138 of them in the state’s commercial capital, Ahmedabad, since the violence was triggered on Wednesday when a Muslim mob killed 58 mostly Hindu activists on a train.

Of the Ahmedabad toll, at least 48 people were killed in a single incident yesterday as several thousand Hindus and Muslims, armed with knives, iron rods, swords and hockey sticks, fought a street battle in a residential area.

Witnesses said outnumbered policemen opened fire on rioters on several occasions and hospitals struggled to cope with a flood of injured.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee warned that the government would deal “firmly and effectively” with the rioters and appealed to both Hindus and Muslims for calm.

“The PM assures the people that the central government would deal firmly and effectively with the situation in Gujarat and elsewhere in the country,” said a statement signed by Vajpayee and opposition leaders.