R E G I O N: Hindu mobs attack churches as India violence continues

* Hundreds flee homes
* Peace committees set up to initiate talks among community leaders

BHUBANESWAR: Hindu mobs ransacked a church and clashed with Christian villagers in eastern India on Thursday, as hundreds fled their homes.

Rampaging Hindu mobs ransacked a church and clashed with Christian villagers, police said, as authorities struggled to control spiralling religious violence in the region. Police deployed more than 3,000 personnel in the streets but they could not stop the ransacking of at least one church. Local media said as many as four churches were attacked. "Police are marching in several areas now," Orissa police chief Gopal Chandra Nanda told Reuters.

Television pictures showed mobs armed with rods putting up roadblocks on Thursday and others attacking churches. Other mobs armed with bows and arrows and axes have attacked Christian homes, dragging out women and children. Hundreds have fled to forests and nearby hills, officials said.

"Moments after we passed by a Christian village, people set it on fire and everything was over within minutes," a senior police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said from Kandhamal, the worst-hit district.

Peace committees: On Thursday, peace committees were set up in villages to bring community leaders together for talks, but Christians in many villages said attacks were worse than what the government has said.

Police said more than 100 people had been arrested after rioters torched nearly 500 houses as well as Christian prayer halls and vehicles in eastern Orissa state. "Over 300 people fled our village and have taken shelter in the forest," Kanu Chandra Nayek told the Indian Express newspaper after his village was attacked by a Hindu mob. "Here we have almost nothing to eat, there's a constant downpour, our children are sick," Nayek was quoted saying.

Indian police have been ordered to shoot on sight after the killing of a popular Hindu holy leader on Saturday sparked the riots, which have drawn the condemnation of the pope. Orissa authorities say nine people have died, but government officials speaking on condition of anonymity have put the toll at 16. "The situation is certainly tense but under control," local civil administrator Satyabrata Sahu told AFP.

Residents waited in a mile-long queue to buy essential supplies when the curfew was relaxed for a few hours in the worst-hit Kandhmal district. Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday "firmly condemned" the violence in Orissa, where Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons were burnt alive in 1999 - a crime for which a Hindu man is serving life in jail. agencies