NEW DELHI: Three small bombs packed in tin lunch boxes hit a northern Indian town Tuesday, lightly wounding six people in an area that earlier this year saw clashes between Hindus and Muslims, police said.

The three blasts took place in quick succession shortly after dusk in Gorakhpur, about 600 kilometers (370 miles) east of New Delhi, said police spokesman Surendra Srivastav.

Srivastav said the bombs were relatively small and hit a market, a building and an intersection. At least six people sustained minor wounds, he added.

The attack came four days after a historic mosque in southern India was bombed, killing 11 people. Another five were killed when clashes erupted between security officials and Muslim protesters after the blast and police opened fire on stone-throwing crowds.

Like many northern Indian towns, Gorakhpur is majority Hindu but has a substantial Muslim population.
In late January, the two communities clashed in riots that left at least one Hindu dead.

The violence broke out when a Hindu wedding procession clashed with a Muslim religious parade, and authorities were forced to impose a weeklong curfew in the area to calm the situation.

Relations between Hindus, more than 80 percent of India’s population, and Muslims, who account for about 130 million of India’s 1.1 billion people, have been relatively peaceful since the bloody partition of the subcontinent into India and Muslim Pakistan at independence from Britain in 1947, but there have been sporadic bouts of violence.