General strike call in West Bengal

The main opposition party in West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress, has called for a twelve-hour general strike on Friday after violent clashes with rival political activists.

More than eighty people were injured in the clashes between Trinamool Congress party followers and supporters of West Bengal's ruling Marxist-Communist party.

The violence broke out on Wednesday evening when communist sympathisers allegedly fired arrows at buses carrying workers from the Trinammol Congress.

The violence quickly escalated as the two rival groups threw bricks at each other and set fire to some houses. Among the injured was the Indian federal Railways Minister Mamata Banarjee, who was hit by a brick on her foot.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service