3 bombs in northern Indian town wound 6

Three small bombs packed in lunch boxes exploded in a northern Indian town Tuesday, slightly wounding six people in an area where Hindus and Muslims clashed earlier this year, police said.

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

Srivastav said the bombs were relatively small and exploded in a market, a building and an intersection, and at least six people had minor wounds.

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, riots in the two communities left 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.

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 has been sporadic violence.