Attackers armed with explosives and automatic rifles stormed India’s most bitterly disputed religious site today, prompting a nationwide security alert for fear of an eruption of communal violence.

At least five assailants were killed in a gun battle with security forces lasting two hours after they attacked the perimeter of the heavily fortified compound at Ayodhya where a medieval mosque was torn down in 1992 by Hindu hardliners seeking to build a temple there.

One of the men reportedly blew himself up with explosives strapped to his body while a sixth casualty was believed to be a bystander caught in the crossfire.

The attack pushed Ayodhya, the most notorious tinderbox of Hindu-Muslim conflict since independence, back into the headlines after several years of relative calm.

The destruction of the Babri mosque 13 years ago sparked some of the worst religious rioting ever seen in India in which more than 2,000 people died.

The most recent violence over Ayodhya flared in 2002 when a train carrying Hindu activists returning from a rally in support of building the temple there was set alight, killing nearly 60 people. The incident was followed by anti-Muslim pogroms across Gujarat in which at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were burned, hacked and beaten to death.

Hardliners, however, have not let up in their campaign to build a temple on what they claim is the birthplace of the Hindu god, Ram. Hindu nationalist leaders immediately blamed the attack on Islamic militants linked to the Kashmir struggle and called for a nationwide strike, sparking fears of a violent backlash against Muslims.

The Government said it was too early to know who the attackers were, but major cities were put on high alert and police deployed to religious sites.

Police said the men had travelled to Ayodhya in an Ambassador taxi they had picked up at the railway station while posing as tourists. Closer to the site, they threw the driver out of the car and took over the vehicle, driving it up to the complex where a jeep filled with explosives was used to blow up the perimeter wall.

Questions are being asked today how the armed men had been able to get so close to the site without being apprehended. Ayodhya is guarded at all times by thousands of police and paramilitary soldiers, and the site has multiple barricades where every worshipper is frisked before being allowed in. Security rules are so tight that even pens, pencils, lighters and matchboxes are prohibited.

Prominent Hindu hardliners were quick to jump on the incident. Lal Krishna Advani, the hawkish leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who nearly lost his leadership recently in a botched attempt to reinvent himself as a secularist, returned to form with a fiery call for protest. The Ram temple has long been the BJP’s cause célèbre but with varying degrees of public support.

"To attack the Ram Janbhoomi, the holiest shrine of the Hindus, is a very serious thing and there should be an equal reaction," he said in Delhi. Mr Advani was at Ayodhya with the mob that tore down the Babri mosque in 1992, having previously toured the country in a Ram chariot calling for the erection of a Hindu temple on the site.

On a recent visit to Pakistan he said that day had been the saddest of his life but today he declared that the Ram temple issue was once again "centre stage."

Hindu nationalists are still fighting their claim to build a temple at the site through the Indian courts where the case was referred after authorities blocked construction for fear of fanning the fire of religious strife.

Hindu right-wingers claim that the Babri mosque was itself build on the site of a Hindu temple demolished by Moghul invaders, giving Hinduism the pre-eminent claim to the site. That claim has been supported by Indian archaeologists but Muslims dismiss its relevance, saying there is no evidence that the site is indeed Ram’s birthplace as they claim.

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