AHMEDABAD, 9 May — Soldiers and paramilitary forces patrolled flash points in India’s western Gujarat state yesterday after at least 14 people were killed and 45 injured in a fresh bout of Hindu-Muslim violence.

"It’s sheer madness ruling the streets," said Sahiteesh Dave, 29, whose store was shut by a three-day-old curfew in Ahmedabad city’s mainly Hindu western outskirts.

"There’s no security in our lives — nobody can predict what will happen where." Army and paramilitary forces armed with AK-47s patrolled deserted streets as summer temperatures soared to 45 degrees Celsius.

The state was quiet after at least 14 people died and 45 were injured on Tuesday, but a police officer said the city’s east and a pocket in the far west remained tense.

"The slightest provocation could start a riot," he said. The state Cabinet was to meet later in the day to decide whether to pour more security forces into the city to try to end the worst religious bloodshed in India in a decade that has killed over 900 people, according to official figures.

"It could send a formal request to the center for additional forces," a spokesman for state Chief Minister Narendra Modi said. Human rights groups say the death toll is around 2,000.

The latest outbreak was triggered when a Muslim teacher was dragged off his scooter on his way to work and burned to death.

That sparked revenge attacks by Muslims against Hindus. One cart-puller was stabbed, burned to death and his body dumped in a well. In other clashes, people were stoned or stabbed to death. Two died when police opened fire to disperse rioters.

Hindus and Muslims battled furiously through the night in the narrow lanes of the majority-Muslim old quarter of Ahmedabad, hurling crude explosives and tin cans containing glass and nails.

The overnight violence brought the death toll since last Sunday to 24 but that was lower than previous outbreaks since the rioting peaked in early March.

Ahmedabad has borne the brunt of the wave of revenge killings and clashes that erupted in late February when a mob torched a train carrying Hindus, killing 58.

Many residents said they wanted order restored quickly. "The government must do whatever’s needed to stop the violence — this can’t be allowed to go on," rickshaw driver Shabir Hussain said.

The violence has plunged the ruling central coalition led by the Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which also governs Gujarat, into a crisis with some allies and the opposition accusing it of failing to act decisively to end the bloodshed.

But security officers warned it could be hard to end. There are "high feelings of hatred among Hindus and Muslims and a lack of confidence in each other because of all the killings," one official, who did not wish to be named, said.

"There’s also a systematic campaign by hard-line Hindus against Muslims."

More than 100,000 people, mainly Muslims, are crammed into relief camps throughout the state, petrified to return to their neighborhoods for fear of fresh attacks, relief workers say.

"Unless the government decides to get to the root of the disease and treat it, this low-grade communal fever that has gripped the city will continue," an intelligence official said.