At least ten people dead in India after simultaneous explosions in several cities targeted courthouses.

A series of near-simultaneous explosions ripped through courthouse complexes Friday in three north Indian cities, with blasts going off in Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad, killing at least ten lawyers and injuring dozens more, officials said.

Federal authorities blamed terrorists trying to spark unrest between India’s Hindu majority and Muslim minority, though a legal group noted all the blasts came in a state where lawyers had decided earlier this year not to defend terrorist suspects.

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 within 250 kilometers of one another.

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, said Lal. 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. …

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