Ahmadabad, India ? Religious clashes claimed more lives in the western state of Gujarat, bringing the death toll to 538 as Hindu mobs attacked Muslim homes in several towns overnight, police said today.

Schools remained closed, curfews were still in effect in some cities and Muslims were still too frightened to leave their homes or return to those they fled, fearing more attacks from mob violence that started Wednesday.

The death toll had climbed from 499 Sunday to 538 by today, said an officer in the state police control room, as Hindu gangs attacked Muslims in several villages in the northern districts of Sabarkantha and Banaskantha. The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said fresh killings were reported overnight in the towns of Halad and Dantha.

The violence also spread beyond the borders of Gujarat. Police said a Muslim vendor was stabbed to death on Sunday while followers of both faiths threw rocks at each other in Aligarh, a city with a history of Muslim-Hindu violence in the central state of Uttar Pradesh. Some 2,000 paramilitary troops were sent to the city and a curfew imposed.

Muslims began the wave of violence that has gripped Gujarat since last Wednesday, when a group of them attacked a trainload of Hindu nationalists and set it on fire. The 58 deaths provoked a retaliatory rampage by Hindus.

Most of those killed since then have been Muslims, many burned alive by vengeful Hindus. On Sunday, authorities said the violence was subsiding, although another 13 people died in Gujarat as well as the Muslim vendor killed in Aligarh.

In one Gujarat town, Deodhar, four Muslims were burned alive Sunday and police shot to death two of the Hindu crowd attacking them.

Rioting and looting occurred in three villages in the Kheda district, and police shot four people to death, while three others died in fights. Mobs also set fire to shops and trucks on a highway at Bhavnagar.

In Ahmadabad, the city of 3.5 million that saw most of the bloodshed, a curfew was lifted in some neighborhoods but many Muslims were still too frightened to leave their homes or return to those they had fled. Instead, they sent frantic text messages on their cellphones to friends and relatives.

“Need milk and vegetables. Have nothing for children to eat,” read one message received by Ghulam Mohammad, who was hiding in his apartment in a Muslim section of the city.

The plea came from his friend Kamaluddin Lakhani but there was little Mohammad could do. He had no money, no gasoline, and was running out of food himself. He too was afraid to go out.

Elsewhere in Ahmadabad, the staff and students of the Indian Institute of Management, one of India’s most prestigious universities, held a peace rally Sunday that was disrupted by slogan-shouting Hindu activists who burned placards.