A bomb was detonated at a well-known Muslim religious shrine in northern India on Thursday, killing at least two people and injuring another twelve, media reports said.

The blast took place within the courtside of the Ajmer Sharif Dargah, a shrine dedicated to Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, a 12th century Sufi Muslim saint. At that time there were hundreds of Muslims inside as they were being served meals after the daily fast during the holly month of Ramadan.

The bomb was planted near a tree and close to it were the two people who perished. One of the two was a 45-year-old man, Deepak Upreti, divisional commissioner of Ajmer town told the PTI news agency.

Of the 12 injured worshippers, two were in a severe condition and received medical treatment in Ajmer, 370 kilometers of the Indian capital New Delhi.

The local police intervened immediately after the explosion, managed to evacuate the people that were still inside and sealed the area.

The Indian Home Ministry stated that it was a terrorist attack and police investigators said they believe that either Hindu or Muslim fundamentalist outfits are behind the tragic incident. Specialists investigating the scene informed that the terrorists used a low-intensity explosive.

"The reason behind the blast is to disturb communal harmony and create communal discord. We have issued a nationwide alert after the attack," Junior Home Minister Sri Prakash Jaiswal told reporters.

The incident follows a series of terrorist strikes that happened over the last months. The strikes were aimed at religious sites in India, especially Muslim mosques.

On August 25th, explosions in the southern Hyderabad city killed 43 lives and a bomb blast in the Mecca mosque in the same city took the lives of 11 believers in May. A comparable strike in the western town of Malegaon left 37 people attending the ceremony dead inside a mosque.

Ajmer Sharif Dargah is place of great interest not only for Indian Muslims but for people of other religions as well. The shrine inside it, shelters a Sufi saint who came to the region from Persia in 1192.