HYDERABAD, India (AFP, REUTERS) - Two explosions shook the southern Indian city of Hyderabad late on Thursday and casualties were feared, police said.

"There have been two blasts," an official in the police control room told AFP, adding that there were reports several people had been injured.

India's CNN-IBN television network said one of the blasts occurred near a bus stop in a crowded market area, adding that several injured people had been rushed to hospital.

At least seven people were killed and 47 people injured in the blasts, police said.

Television channels said as many as 15 people may have been killed in the explosions.

"We have been in touch with state government officials,"R.K. Singh, the top bureaucrat in the federal interior ministry, told reporters in New Delhi.

The explosions come less than two weeks after India hanged a Kashmiri man for a militant attack on the country's parliament in 2001 that had sparked violent clashes.

Witnesses told Reuters they heard at least two explosions in the area just after dusk but there could have been more. TV showed debris and body parts strewn on the street in the Dilsukh Nagar area of Hyderabad, a crowded neighbourhood of cinema halls, shops, restaurants and a fruit and vegetable market.

In July 2011, three near-simultaneous blasts ripped through India's financial capital, Mumbai. At least 20 people were killed and over 100 wounded in the blasts set off by Muslim militants, authorities said.

Last year, four small explosions occurred in quick succession in a busy shopping area of the western Indian city of Pune.