Up to 35 people were killed today when at least two explosions ripped through crowds outside a mosque and a Muslim cemetery in Malegaon, a city in western India with a long history of religious violence.

Indian authorities imposed a curfew on the town in the state of Maharashtra and sent a rapid reaction force of riot police to prevent retaliatory attacks by the enraged local Muslim population.

The blasts came almost two months after a series of bombs, blamed on Islamist groups with links to Pakistan, killed 186 people on commuter trains in Mumbai, about 160 miles southwest of Malegaon.

Just two days ago, Manmohan Singh, India’s Prime Minister, warned the nation that there could be more such terrorist attacks -- on economic and religious targets as well as nuclear installations.

There were conflicting reports tonight about the exact death toll in Malegaon, as well as the number of explosions and their precise location.

V.K. Duggal, India’s Home Secretary, said that two blasts outside the crowded Nurani mosque had killed 30 people and injured 50 more. "No one has taken responsibility for the blasts... details are still sketchy," he said.

But Asif Sheikh, Malegaon’s mayor, said that three explosions, two of them at the Muslim cemetery, had killed 35 people and injured about 50.

Police said that thousands of people had gathered at the mosque and the burial ground for regular Friday prayers and to mark the Shab-e-Barat or "Night of Fortune" festival, when Muslims pray for the dead.

Two of the bombs were thought to have been concealed on bicycles, while the third was hidden in a bouquet of flowers, police said.

Television footage showed people stampeding away from the mosque shortly after the blast, some jumping over corpses as they fled, while others stopped to load bleeding casualties onto hand carts.

Later, angry mobs shouted anti-government slogans and scuffled with police, raising fears of further violence in the town whose population of 500,000 is about 75 percent Muslim.

Malegaon has suffered regular spasms of religious conflict since 1962, most recently in 2001, when 15 people were killed in rioting between Hindus and Muslims.

P.S. Pasricha, Maharashtra state’s director-general of police, said that the entire state had been put on high alert to prevent further bloodshed.

"The motive appears to be to create panic and make Hindus and Muslims fight with each other," he said.

He said that seven police officers had been injured in clashes with crowds in Malegaon, but he insisted that the situation was under control.

"We have activated all police machinery to ensure that communal harmony is maintained," he said.

The Malegaon blasts came four days before verdicts are to be announced for 123 defendants in a trial linked to 1993 bomb attacks in Mumbai that killed 257.

Those bombings were blamed on underworld figures and Islamic militants retaliating for Hindu-Muslim riots in 1992-1993, triggered by the razing of a mosque at Ayodhya, in northern Uttar Pradesh state, by Hindu zealots.

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