Pat Dollard | Young Americans

LUCKNOW, India (AP) - A series of near-simultaneous explosions shook courthouses Friday in three north Indian cities, with blasts going off in Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad and killing at least 10 lawyers and injuring dozens of other people people, officials said.

At least two bombs went off in Faizabad, killing four lawyers and injuring 10 to 12 more, said R.N. Singh, a local police officer. One of the bombs was rigged to a motorcycle, he said.

Padam Kriti, a spokesman of the Uttar Pradesh Bar Association, said the state’s lawyers had decided earlier this year not to defend any Muslim terror suspects, adding “it looks like” that decision may have been behind blasts.

Faizabad is near the town of Ayodhya, where Hindu extremists destroyed the 16th century Babri Mosque in 1992, sparking widespread Hindu- Muslim riots.

At least seven lawyers were killed in three explosions in Varanasi, one of Hinduism’s holiest cities, said Brij Lal, a top official in Uttar Pradesh state, where all three cities are located.

At least two of those bombs were attached to bicycles, police said.

In Faizabad, a pair of bombs killed three lawyers and injured 10 to 12 more, Lal said.

One of the bombs was rigged to a motorcycle, said R.N. Singh, a local police officer. Faizabad is near the town of Ayodhya, where Hindu extremists destroyed the 16th century Babri Mosque in 1992, sparking widespread Hindu-Muslim riots.

There were no confirmed deaths in Lucknow, the state capital, though police said at least a few people were believed to be injured in twin explosions.

Lal said at least 40 people were believed to have been injured, most of them lawyers.

The blasts went off less than 15 minutes apart inside court complexes, but not in courtrooms, Mishra said.

“This is the handiwork of some group that wants to disturb communal harmony in the state,” the junior federal home minister, Sriprakash Jaiswal, told reporters. “They may have targeted the courts because large crowds gather in courthouses here.”

A series of muslim terrorist bombings have ripped across India in the past two years. In August, a pair of explosions killed 43 people in the southern city of Hyderabad. In July 2006, bombs in seven Mumbai commuter trains killed more than 200 people.

Police named no immediate suspects in the Friday explosions, but bombings are commonly perpetrated by Pakistan-based Muslim militants hoping to create tensions between India’s Hindu majority and Muslim minority.