NEW DELHI, May 4: Unprecedented Hindu-Muslim violence in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur entered its second day Tuesday, with the official death toll rising to at least 86, police and residents said, report AFP, PTI and AP.

United News of India said in an unattributed report that 200 people were killed.

Clashes spread to new areas this morning.

The sources said more bodies were likely to be recovered. However, It would take time to recover all the bodies as the incidents had taken place in different areas.

After the day-long violence

Monday, curfew was imposed in three districts of Manipur.

About 3,000 troops and thousands of policemen were patrolling the riot-torn dis-tyicts.

Police in Guwahati, the capital of Assam state, had said earlier that the clashes were mainly between members of two warring groups of tribal militants, but this was contradicted by Manipur authorities.

Members of the two communities torched shops and buses and fought pitched battles in the state capital of Imphal and surrounding areas, defying a police-imposed cur-few. according to residents reached by telephone.

Eighty-six people were killed, including 1 1 women and nine children, police said, adding that the bodies were brought to two hospitals in Imphal. Nearly 500 people were injured in the clashes.

Police sources said they expected the death toll to rise as violence continued despite the curfew and the deployment of paramilitary troop reinforcements.

Offices, businesses, schools, colleges and banks were closed in Imphal and other tense parts of the state which has a population of 1.8 million and shares a border with Burma.

Some 2.000 people sheltered in makeshift relief camps opened in Imphal by the state government, controlled by Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao's ruling Congress (I) Party.

The Hindu-Muslim violence was unprecedented in Manipur, where Hindus arc in an overwhelming majority.

Police blamed the clashes on "rumours spread by antisocial elements," the .Press Trust of India (PTI) said. Ona rumour said 20 women of on£ community were forcibly taken away by members of a different community, PTI added.

In keeping with Indian press conventions barring the identification of groups involved in communal clashes, the news agency did not name the communities involved.

Manipur Director-General of Police A V Liddle said the violence appeared to be a sequel to the beating of a Muslim gun-runner by Hindu members of a local underground organization.

The Muslim was thrashed when he failed to deliver weapons to the group as promised. Liddle said.