Compiled by Our Staff From Dispatches  

New Delhi — Hindu and Muslim rioters burned and vandalized mosques, temples, homes and shops Friday in some of the worst violence to hit the capital this week. The nationwide death toll from the religious violence passed 1,000.  

As the police reported that three people had been killed in the Seelampur district of New Delhi, a reporter at the scene saw two bodies being taken away and residents digging out more.  

Eye-stinging smoke hung in the air from fires that gutted swaths of homes in the narrow streets of the Muslim district.  

At least one mosque was smoldering, bloodstained and strewn with holy books. Several Hindu temples on other streets were littered with stones from Muslim at tacks. Each side blamed the other for starting the melee.  

A pitched battle was under way Seelampur as Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao told foreign reporters that calm was returning.  

“There is a situation of danger to the country,” he said. “But I can say the worst is behind us, as of today.”  

He added, “It is only a matter of days before we come back to normal.”  

The turmoil began after Hindu extremists demolished a 16th-century mosque to make way for a temple in the northern town of Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh state.  

On Friday, the high court of Ut tar Pradesh overturned the confiscation by the state government of 1.1 hectares (2.77 acres) of land around the shrine 14 months ago.  

The court did not rule on the ownership of the property, which has been in litigation since 1949 between Hindus who occupied it and the Muslim Waqf, or trust, that claims ownership because it was an ancient graveyard.  

The state government, under the control of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, acquired the land to build a tourist complex for pilgrims visiting Ayodhya. But after Hindu zealots destroyed the Babri Mosque on Sunday, Mr. Rao dismissed the Uttar Pradesh government.  

The army remained in command in at least a dozen cities, including Bombay and Calcutta. In New Delhi, 10,000 paramilitary troops guarded the 17th-century Jama Masjid, India’s largest mosque, and the Muslim neighborhood around it.  

The chief priest at the Jama Masjid, Sayed Ahmed Bukhari, said through the shrine’s public-address system: “Let the dark time pass. Let peace return.”  

Muslims listened from the rooftops of their homes as riot police kept watch. Only about 100 people took part in the prayer; 25,000 to 30,000 usually congregate Friday.  

Similar security precautions were taken in other cities across India.  

More people have been killed this week than during three months of violence in 1990, when Hindus tried unsuccessfully to take over the same Ayodhya mosque.  

Mr. Rao reiterated that his government would reconstruct the shrine, which he said had been a “victim of vandalism.”  

Several important Hindu nationalist leaders went into hiding Friday, fearing arrest a day after the government outlawed their organizations.

(AP, Reuters)