New Delhi ? Bomb blasts in a crowded Hindu temple and a railway station left at least 15 people dead and dozens seriously wounded Tuesday in the holy city of Varanasi, government officials said.

One explosion rocked the Hindu Sankatmochan temple complex, one of the ancient city’s oldest Hindu places of worship, as hundreds of people were gathered inside.

The second bomb detonated minutes later at 6:35 p.m. in a railway station’s second-class waiting room, police said. An express train bound for the capital, New Delhi, was waiting at a nearby platform for a scheduled departure in 10 minutes.

“We saw people screaming in pain and running helter-skelter,” railway police subinspector Jawahar Lal said in a telephone interview.

Volunteers who helped rush casualties to hospitals reported seeing many dead and nearly 100 injured, said Rolly Singh, who heads a local aid organization.

The blast left a crater several feet deep, Lal said.

Police were reportedly working to defuse another bomb Tuesday night at the railway station.

Varanasi is a sacred city to Hindus, who believe that if they die on the banks of the Ganges there, they will be freed from the cycle of death and reincarnation and achieve eternal bliss. Hundreds of bodies are burned each day in Varanasi’s funeral pyres and the ashes are spread in the river.

The Sankatmochan temple complex is damaged after a bomb blast in Varanasi, India. Explosions rocked a packed railway station and crowded Hindu temple Tuesday in Hinduism's holiest city, and at least 15 people were killed, authorities said.

The city, which also draws large numbers of foreign tourists, is about 450 miles southeast of New Delhi. Although it is most significant to Hindus, the city has sites holy to several faiths. It is an important Buddhist pilgrimage site and has Muslim, Christian and Sikh places of worship.

The attacks came four days after a visit to India by President Bush, during which hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, many of them Muslims and supporters of left-wing political parties, held mainly peaceful protests.

Varanasi is in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, and police moved quickly Tuesday night to step up security amid concerns that the blasts could spark further acts of violence.

After Tuesday’s blasts, Shahid Siddiqui, general-secretary of the left-wing Samajwadi Party allied with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s coalition government, said he fears India has become a target of “international terrorists and extremists” because the nation is moving closer to the U.S.

“We have to be on our alert now because the terrorists who are targeting the United States, or other countries, will target us,” Siddiqui said on Indian television.