SRINAGAR, India (AP) Villagers in northern India threw stones at police and soldiers searching their homes for weapons used in recent communal violence, leading to a clash that killed one person, police said Thursday.
Security forces responded to attack by residents of Khara village in Uttar Pradesh by hittingback with batons, and one man died from head injuries, senior police official Arun Kumar said.
Violent clashes between the region's Hindu and Muslim communities have left 41 people dead since Saturday. Calm has mostly been restored in Muzaffarnagar and two other affected districts, and authorities eased a curfew, allowing people to move freely for five hours on Wednesday.
The village searched Wednesday night was in a fourth district, Baghpat.
Police said they found five ammunition cartridges for an AK-47, but no weapon.
Uttar Pradesh was at the heart of some of India's worst communal clashes in December 1992, after a Hindu mob razed the 16th century Babri mosque in Ayodhya.
