At least 15 people have died in a series of suspected bomb attacks on a railway station and temple in India's pilgrimage city of Varanasi.
At least 40 people were injured, 22 of them seriously.
Authorities were trying to determine the cause of the blasts in Varanasi, which came only days after Muslims and Hindus battled each other in the nearby city of Lucknow and angry Hindus looted Muslim shops and burned vehicles in the coastal resort of Goa.
The country's home minister, Shivraj Patil, said there were varying estimates of casualties. The explosions reportedly occurred 10 minutes apart.
The explosions raised fears of a repeat of Hindu-Muslim violence that rocked western India in 2002 after 60 Hindus pilgrims were killed in a train fire initially blamed on Muslims. The rioting left more than 1,000 people dead over three months.
The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, the state where today's blasts occurred, condemned the blasts and appealed for restraint.
The explosion at the Sankat Mochan temple went off near dusk, when the shrine is ordinarily crowded with devout Hindus making a nightly offering to the monkey-god Hanuman, said Madan Mohan Pande, a police inspector in Varanasi.
Varanasi, 450 miles east of New Delhi, is Hinduism's holiest city and ordinarily is filled with pilgrims visiting temples and bathing in the holy waters of the Ganges River, which runs through town.
AP