Ten people were injured after a grenade exploded near the Tourist Reception Centre in Jammu and Kashmir’s Srinagar on Sunday, reported The Indian Express.

Quoting unidentified police officials, the newspaper reported that suspected militants threw the grenade towards the Central Reserve Police Force personnel near the reception centre on Residency Road. The area hosts a crowded Sunday market.

The grenade ended up hitting a street vendor’s cart and resulted in six civilians getting injured. They were shifted to the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital, according to Deccan Herald.

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The Jammu and Kashmir Police and paramilitary forces have cordoned off the area. The search for suspected militants who orchestrated the attack is ongoing.

Calling the attack “deeply disturbing”, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah called on security forces to “end this spurt of attacks at the earliest”.

“The last few days have been dominated by headlines of attacks and encounters in parts of the valley,” Abdullah wrote on social media. “There can be no justification for targeting innocent civilians.”

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This comes a day after a wanted commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, Usman Lashkari, was killed in a gunfight.

Police said that a large cache of arms and ammunition was recovered from the site of the gun battle.

Lashkari, who had been active in the valley for several years, was involved in the killing of Inspector Masroor Wani, who was shot dead at close range while playing cricket at the city’s Eidgah ground in October 2023, PTI quoted an unidentified police officer as claiming.

This was the first gunfight in Srinagar since September 2022, when two militants were killed in an operation in the capital city’s Nowgam area.

Sunday’s grenade attack marks the first such incident in Srinagar in over a year, according to The Indian Express.