India: Worst mass violence in Delhi in decades kills 13 during Trump visit

“Rioters roamed the streets with iron rods and wooden sticks, demanding to know whether people were Hindus or Muslims. Mosques were damaged and shops were set ablaze”

Mass Hindu-Muslim violence engulfs Delhi today during Trump and Melania's suck-up session with Modi.

From the Washington Post:

"Rioters roamed the streets with iron rods and wooden sticks, demanding to know whether people were Hindus or Muslims. Mosques were damaged and shops were set ablaze, sending smoke billowing high into the air. People with gunshot wounds and blunt trauma from hurled stones rushed into a nearby hospital."

The video and photos of the bloody violence are horrifying. None are published by us in this blog post, but some are shown in the embedded tweets that follow.

Excerpt:

The riots represent a serious escalation of tensions after months of protests in response to a controversial citizenship law and growing frictions between supporters and opponents of the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (…)

This week's violence in northeastern Delhi is the worst in the capital since at least 1992, when there were nationwide riots, and possibly since the anti-Sikh riots of 1984.

The trigger for the clashes came when Kapil Mishra, a local leader of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, on Sunday threatened to clear a sit-in mounted by protesters, nearly all Muslim women, against the citizenship law. He said he would take no action while Trump was visiting, but that if police did not move the protesters soon, he would take matters into his own hands.

Read more:
Worst communal violence in Delhi in decades leaves 13 dead as Trump visits India
[Joanna Slater, Niha Masih, and Tania Dutta, Feb. 25, 2020]

PHOTO: "President Trump and the First Lady in India," Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead, PUBLIC DOMAIN.

President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump are presented with a gift by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a tour of the home of Mahatma Gandhi Monday, Feb. 24, 2020, at Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, India.