VICTIMS OF DEADLY COMMUNAL CLASHES FILL HOSPITAL

NEW DELHI» Patients on stretchers crammed the emergency room, while relatives of the dead wailed outside a morgue as injured people continued to pour into a public hospital after three days of clashes between religious groups that coincided with President Donald Trump’s visit to India.

At least 20 people were killed in the clashes, including at least one police official and an intelligence bureau officer, and nearly 200 people were injured, Hindus and Muslims, in the worst communal riots in the Indian capital in decades.

On Wednesday, victims’ relatives stood outside the mortuary, some crying as they waited for hospital authorities to release the bodies following postmortems.

The corridors of the Guru Teg Bahadur hospital at New Delhi’s eastern border are often crowded, but on Wednesday hundreds thronged its wards as doctors worked through the night to treat injuries.

Shaleen Mitra, an adviser to Delhi’s health minister, Satyender Jain, said police blocked ambulances from evacuating the injured from a small, crowded private hospital in Mustafabad, a Muslim-majority area, to the larger public Guru Teg Bahadur hospital.