Grenade blast sends vendors scurrying for cover

Sumayyah Qureshi
Tribune News Service
Srinagar, October 12

Hari Singh High (HSH) Street in Srinagar on Saturday was bustling with vendors, all lined on the one side, selling fruit, woolens and household items.

Business was going on until a grenade blast sent everyone scurrying around 2.50 pm. In no time, the street was deserted and the vendors had fled. Shards of glass and packing material lay strewn on the street. The traffic had been diverted.

A few vendors, who had set up stalls a few metres from the explosion site, were frantically packing their goods. Some fruit vendors were furiously pushing their carts, moving to the other part of the area.

Only vendors have been operating throughout the day on the street since the clampdown. All shops, however, remain closed and open only for a few hours in the morning.

An auto-rickshaw driver said an explosion had occurred and some people were injured.

Men, women, youth and even children, who live near the explosion site, all come out of their houses on hearing the explosion.

The explosion was loud enough, said some local women near the site of the explosion, who stood in one of the bylanes facing the street. They said their houses were shaken by the explosion and they had come out to see what had happened.

“Some people were injured. They have been taken to the hospital in auto-rickshaws,” said a few women, who cautioned the youth of the area against standing by the roadside.

As per reports, seven persons have been injured in the blast. The blast is seen as an attempt to discourage vendors from operating. On Friday, the government launched a campaign against shutdowns by releasing full-page advertisements in local newspapers, telling people about the disadvantages of the shutdowns.

A police official said they arrived as soon as they heard about the explosion. “We were not here at the time of the explosion. We came just now. Some people have been injured,” he said.

This is the first attack in the area since the clampdown on August 5 and is a setback to the government’s efforts to restore normalcy in the region.