AHMADABAD, India - A Hindu crowd set fire to a block of Muslim homes yesterday, killing at least 38 people, including a dozen children, amid riots across the Indian state of Gujarat sparked by a Muslim attack on a train full of Hindu nationalists.

The violence yesterday left at least 58 dead in the western state. The army was called out to help restore order in Ahmadabad, the commercial center where outnumbered police firing tear gas and rifles were unable to stop Hindus from burning and looting shops and hotels.

Narendra Modi, the state's chief minister, said the army might also be deployed in some 26 other towns where a curfew was declared.

At least 50 buildings, most of them Muslim-owned, were torched in Ahmadabad, sending smoke billowing over the skyline. Roaming groups of Hindus went through neighborhoods, chanting, "Hail, Rama," in honor of one of their chief gods.

The rioting erupted after Muslims in Godhra, a town southeast of Ahmadabad, attacked a train full of Hindu nationalists Wednesday, killing 58 people.

Muslim tea vendors and their neighbors stoned the train, then set it on fire when Hindus, chanting nationalist slogans, refused to pay for snacks during a five-minute halt, station chief J.K. Katija said. Fourteen children were among the dead. The Hindus were returning from the site of a mosque torn down in 1992 where they now want to build a Hindu temple.

The national government pleaded for restraint, fearful that sectarian violence could spread quickly in this nation of more than 1 billion, whose birth 54 years ago was marked by Hindu-Muslim fighting that killed nearly a million people.