A Christian boy has lunch under an umbrella at a shelter in Raikia village in Orissa. (Reuters)

Bhubaneswar, Aug. 31: A rights body has claimed that 50 people, mostly Christians, were killed in the recent Orissa violence, the statement coming on a day the week-long clashes seemed to have ebbed.

With the state reporting no major clashes today, chief minister Naveen Patnaik claimed normality was returning but the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) hit out at his government.

“Since all entry roads have been blocked with logs… (in) remote areas, the Hindu fundamentalists are being allowed to carry out mass killings of Christians,” said ACHR director Suhas Chakma. “This is an abject failure of the Indian state to protect the right to life of citizens.”

Government sources said the death toll was 14.

A report by the Delhi-based rights body said thousands of Christians had fled their villages and some 5,000 were living at seven relief camps at Chakapad, Tikabali, G. Udaygiri, Raikia, Baliguda, K. Nuagaon and Phiringia.

About 200 villages, it added, were affected by the “organised attacks and hundreds of churches, including house churches, have been burnt”.

Christians and their places of worship have come under attack since the murder of VHP leader Swami Laxmananda Saraswati and four associates on August 23.

Patnaik, however, claimed the situation was “under control” after a tour of Kandhamal district, the epicentre from which the communal violence had spread. “I have spoken to Union home minister Shivraj Patil and requested him to send an additional 10 companies of central paramilitary forces,” he said.

Among the few stray clashes reported today were attacks on two places of worship on the outskirts of Jeypore town in Koraput, where communal violence had broken out yesterday over graffiti on a college’s walls that allegedly slandered one community.

College students had clashed among one another and then with police. Some 60 people, including 17 policemen, were injured and dozens of vehicles damaged. Curfew continued in Jeypore today.

The CRPF and the state armed police have been deployed in the town, 520km from Bhubaneswar, where community leaders attended a peace meeting. “Six persons have been arrested and we have asked for another company of the CRPF,” said deputy inspector-general of police Sanjib Panda.

News emerged today about attacks on churches in Bolangir district over the past couple of days by VHP and BJP activists. Several churches were demolished or set on fire in Loisingha, Deogan, Saintala and Patnagarh blocks.