Srinagar, Sept. 17: Twenty people, mostly shoppers, were injured when a grenade hurled at a police picket missed its target and exploded in a crowded market here today.

The grenade rolled and exploded below a bus at Budshah Chowk, in the town’s nerve-centre Lal Chowk, limiting the damage that could have occurred had it gone off in the crowd, police said.

The police blamed militants but no group claimed responsibility for the afternoon attack, which took place despite a unilateral ceasefire declared by the United Jihad Council, an umbrella group of militant outfits, in residential areas so the protests over the Amarnath land transfer in the Valley went on peacefully.

Srinagar police chief Ahfad-ul-Mujataba said the target was a constable. “We suspect that militants or an overground worker of theirs might have lobbed the grenade.”