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Series of blasts rock churches in South India: AFP

Three people were injured Thursday after bombs exploded at four churches in the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Goa, police said.

Police officials said a bomb went off in the Jewitt Memorial Baptist Church in the coastal town of Ongole, some 550 km southeast of Andhra Pradesh's capital Hyderabad.

Three people were injured when the bomb equipped with a timer concealed near the entrance to the 114-year-old church exploded after people left morning bible classes, a police official said.

Another bomb exploded in an empty church at Tadepalligudem, some 400 km from the state capital Hyderabad.

In another incident in the neighbouring state of Karnataka, two bombs exploded outside a Roman Catholic church in Wadi town in Gulbarga district, some 600 km north of the state capital Bangalore.

The first of the two explosions occurred outside St Annes church at 6:15 am and the other at 9:00 am, Prathap Reddy of the Karnataka police said.

In a separate incident, a "low-intensity" bomb exploded in coastal Goa at the Saint Andrews church at Vasco da Gama.

No arrests have been made so far.

Police in all three states said they were investigating.

Christians make up 2.5 per cent of India's nearly one billion population. Christians say attacks against them and their churches have increased since the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government took power in March 1998.

India was shocked in January last year when a mob led by an alleged Bajrang Dal activist burned to death Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons as they slept in their car in eastern Orrisa state.

The murders were followed by a spate of anti-Christian violence which peaked with a series of attacks in the western state of Gujarat.

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