NEW DELHI, 2 March — Hindu mobs indulged in mass burning of Muslims alive in India’s western state of Gujarat yesterday as sectarian strife spread elsewhere in this country of one billion. The death toll in three days of religious rioting hit 295.

In two cases of particularly gruesome mass murder, 65 people were burned alive in a shantytown in Gujarat’s commercial capital of Ahmedabad and 30 people in a village in the Panchmahal district.

The army was deployed in Ahmedabad, but for inexplicable reasons the soldiers remained on their trucks even as mobs were seen attacking Muslim localities.

In the worst attack, 300 Hindus set fire before dawn to huts where Muslims were sleeping, police said. After 27 bodies were pulled from the ashes, another 38 people died in the hospital, leaving four with serious burns. Most of the Muslims in the shantytown of Narora, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, had fled Thursday, fearing they would be targets of the Hindu mobs that roamed the city as police watched, unwilling or unable to stop them. Other slum dwellers remained sleeping in their huts, and were burned in the 2 a.m. attack, said Deputy Police Commissioner P.B. Gondya.

The Panchmahal massacre occurred at around 4:00 p.m., said area administrator Jayanti Ravi. She said the rioters, numbering up to 3,000 and from the neighboring Kheda district, raided Pandarwal village. They targeted Muslims and burned 30 of them, including children and women, alive inside their houses.

Godhra, where 58 Hindu activists were massacred by a mob on Wednesday, is in Panchmahal district. The Hindu activists were returning from a drive to help build a temple on the ruins of the Babri Mosque in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya.

In another instance, eight members of a Muslim family were burned in their car. Star News television channel reported that a mob stopped the car in Naroda town in the afternoon, wired it from outside to prevent the passengers from escaping, jammed wood through the windows and then set it on fire. Four men, two women and two children were burned alive.

The Gujarat state home secretary, K. Nityanandam, ordered police to shoot rioters and arsonists on sight. Nine people were killed in police firing yesterday, said State Minister I.K. Jadeja. One policeman was killed by a mob.

Police opened fire at Muslims and Hindus tossing homemade bombs at one another near a mosque in the suburb of Bapunagar, said Deputy Police Commissioner R.J. Savani. Press Trust of India said 16 people were killed by police.

The government said 900 soldiers were patrolling the city of 3.5 million. Journalists saw many soldiers sitting in their trucks, however, watching as Hindu crowds attacked Muslims, while a few policemen stood between them. One Muslim woman clung to a news photographer’s leg, begging him not to leave the scene for fear that she would be killed.

Gangs blockaded roads, searched cars for Muslims, and set fire to shops and homes, continuing the rampages that had gone on Thursday night. Survivors ventured out to collect their dead and seek treatment for their wounds when the sun rose.

Nityanandam said 1,200 people had been arrested since Thursday, when Hindu mobs began their rampage through Ahmedabad and 31 other towns, killing Muslims and burning their property during a strike protest that the state government had supported.

The state’s chief minister, Narendra Modi, refused to say how many of the dead were Muslims, and how many Hindus. He also wouldn’t answer questions at a news conference about why the army was not more active. He said only that the soldiers were doing what the police wanted.

Violence spilled across Gujarat’s borders into adjoining Rajasthan state, where two Muslim truckers were burned alive by a Hindu mob and 50 others injured in a pitched battle between the rival communities elsewhere.

Hindu mobs burned Muslim homes, shops and mosques in pockets of the desert state, prompting the police to open fire in at least one place, Inspector Gen. of Police Kanhaiya Lal Berwa said. In nearby Uttar Pradesh state, Hindus murdered two Muslims in Aligarh and locked a Muslim truck driver in his vehicle and set it on fire in Mathura. The man escaped with critical burns. In Haryana, Hindu mobs pulled down at least five mosques and torched another, officials said. They also reported sporadic clashes elsewhere in the region which adjoins the Indian capital.

Attacks and looting of Muslim properties in Punjab and West Bengal states were also reported during a day-long strike called by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or VHP. VHP activists attacked buses in the southern city of Hyderabad and a crowd of Muslims pelted police with stones after Friday prayers.

In Bombay, VHP activists disrupted rail traffic while there were reports of crowds hurling stones and missiles at public transport vehicles in the suburbs.

The VHP offered to delay its March 15 deadline for building the temple at Ayodhya if the government guaranteed they could construct it later.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said his government would deal “firmly and effectively” with the violence. A government spokesman rejected opposition charges that Vajpayee had deliberately kept troops on stand-by Thursday as violence swept through Gujarat.