BHUBANESWAR (India) - THREE bodies were found overnight in an eastern Indian state racked by clashes between Hindus and Christians, taking the death toll to 11, as violence spread to new districts on Wednesday, police said.

Hindu mobs have damaged more than a dozen churches and attacked Christian homes and an orphanage this week after the murder of a Hindu leader in Orissa's Kandhamal district, a tribal area where Christian missionaries have been active for years.

The murdered leader had been heading a local campaign to reconvert Hindus and tribal people from Christianity.

Authorities extended a curfew in 11 towns of Kandhamal.

Most of the dead so far have been Christians.

Hundreds of police marched through Kandhamal to maintain calm, but the violence spread to nearby districts with Hindus attacking Christians and the two groups clashing at some places.

India's constitution is secular, but most of its billion-plus citizens are Hindu. About 2.5 per cent of Indians are Christians.

But around the Kandhamal area, home to around 650,000 people, more than 20 per cent of the mainly tribal inhabitants are Christian converts.

'Of the three deaths reported from overnight, one person who was attacked with axe and sticks died in hospital last night,' said Mr Kishan Kumar, Kandhamal's chief official, on Wednesday.

Orissa police inspector general, Mr Pradeep Kapoor, said sporadic violence was being reported from the state's other districts such as Baragarh, Bolangir, Raigada and Gajapati.

Violence erupted after armed men killed the Hindu leader linked to the main opposition Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and four others last week.

Police blamed the killings on local Maoist rebels taking sides in a controversy over religious conversions, but Hindus say Christians were to blame.

The worst violence was reported from Kandhamal's Barakhama village on Tuesday where Hindus and Christians clashed and shot at each other, killing four people. That toll could rise as police look for more bodies and clear out burnt debris.

Religious violence has roiled Kandhamal region for years with Hindu and Christian groups fighting over religious conversion.

Hardline Hindus accuse Christian priests of bribing poor tribes and low-caste Hindus to change their faith. Christian groups say lower-caste Hindus who convert do so willingly to escape the highly stratified and oppressive Hindu caste system.

Other attacks
The Vatican has condemned the attacks, calling for 'an end to all bullying' and a return to dialogue.

'It expresses its solidarity with local churches and the religious orders involved, and condemns these actions, which are an affront to dignity, peoples' freedom, and endanger peaceful civil coexistence,' a Vatican statement said.

A top body of Indian bishops said in protest against the killings, some 25,000 Catholic schools and colleges in India would be closed on Friday.

There have been attacks on Christians in other parts of Orissa and India as well in previous years. In 1999, a Hindu mob killed Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two children by burning them in their car in Orissa. -- REUTERS