MUZAFFARNAGAR, Sept 9: Security forces have been ordered to shoot rioters on sight, as communal violence spread in northern India on Monday despite a curfew imposed after clashes broke out between Hindus and Muslims.

Gunfire and street battles that erupted on Saturday in villages around Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh state have killed at least 31 people and left many more wounded or missing, police said.

Both sides have blamed the other for starting the violence.

Police had arrested 200 people by Monday evening. Soldiers deployed to the region have been given orders to shoot rioters on sight, state government official Kamal Saxena said.

Still, the violence spread to the neighbouring districts of Shamli and Meerut. A state of alert has been declared for Uttar Pradesh, the scene of some of India’s worst communal violence when a Hindu mob razed the Babri mosque in Ayodhya in 1992.

Hundreds of people, some packed into bullock carts, tried to flee areas where their community represents a minority. One family trying to leave Kuttba village on Sunday was beaten with metal rods and wooden sticks when caught between fighting factions.

“The whole village was very tense. I wanted to send my family to a safe place,” said Munavar, 24, as his wife, 8-month-old daughter and 6-year-old niece lay on hospital beds nearby wearing bloody clothes and gauze bandages over their heads.

The violence began on Saturday night after a meeting of thousands of Hindu farmers called for justice in the Aug. 27 killing of three young men from Kawal village. Officials said some farmers delivered hate-filled speeches against Muslims.

Clashes with Muslims broke out after the meeting, with many using guns, swords, stones or knives, senior police officer Arun Kumar said.

One 26-year-old farmer, Anuvesh Baliyan, said he and others were attacked in Purvalian village as they were returning home on a tractor from the meeting. He said a mob wielding metal rods and swords surrounded the tractor and began beating them.

“We hid in a field for a full night until troops arrived the next day,” he said at Muzaffarnagar’s hospital, where he was being treated for sword wounds.

In the village of Mirapur Padav, 50-year-old Salma Liaquat said she was sitting in her open-sided hut on Monday morning when four men came out of the forest, shot her in the leg with a pistol and ran away. She and her neighbours, nervous about the rising tension, had asked police to patrol the area.

“We kept calling the police because we were scared,” neighbour Shahid Ansari said. “But they didn’t come until after the attack.”

Hindu and Muslim patients were being kept in separate rooms at the hospital in Muzaffarnagar, about 125km north of New Delhi.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed grief and shock over the deaths, while the central government warned that violence was expected to escalate further in the run-up to next year’s national elections. Already this year, 451 incidents have been reported, compared with 410 for all of 2012, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said.

Mr Shinde accused Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav of failing to heed warnings before the weekend, and said the state government was not doing enough to stop such incidents.

As local politicians accused one another of inciting the latest violence, the state barred people, including politicians from visiting riot-affected areas.

The state’s opposition blamed the government for failing to maintain law and order, while its top elected official accused opposition parties of inciting the violence to undermine his administration.

Mr Yadav, whose Samajwadi party relies heavily on Muslim votes, blamed the troubles on the Hindu nationalist BJP, which is on a major drive to win more seats in the state that contributes most seats to parliament. “The violence is a political conspiracy to defame and destabilise my government. A minor scuffle between two individuals has been blown into a riot simply because of being fuelled by BJP leaders ... who have nothing else to bank on at a time when general elections are not far away,” he said.—Agencies