School children weep as they are led away from the scene of the attack.(Reuters)

Srinagar, May 12: Panic reigned the city’s busiest road as suspected militants set off a grenade blast outside two schools this afternoon.

The explosion, which came a day after a powerful car bomb blast in the high-security Jawahar Nagar area, left two women dead.

Police said 45 people, including 10 schoolchildren, sustained splinter injuries.

Tyndale Biscoe Memorial School, a boys’ high school, and the adjacent Mallinson’s Girls’ School on Residency Road in Lal Chowk had just closed for the day and children were outside the gates when the explosion occurred.

The blast was aimed at a passing security force vehicle, police sources said. But the grenade missed the target and exploded on the road.

“Please save me, I don’t want to die. Call my parents,” screamed a girl, her leg covered in blood.

Distraught parents, many of them weeping, searched for their children at the scene of the blast.

Bloodstained bags lay near the school gates. Bystanders and the police carried the wounded students to hospitals in police vehicles.

“There was a deafening sound and, after a moment, I saw many people lying down. I grabbed my children and ran for safety,” Bilal Ahmad, a father of two, said.

“I saw a haze of concrete and dust and heard a loud sound. It was terrifying,” recalled a visibly shaken schoolboy, Haseeb.

The wounded included 11 passersby and two teachers.

They have been taken to hospital. Attending doctors said most of them are out of danger.

There were dozens of cars, buses and two-wheelers on the road when the blast took place. In panic, drivers tried to speed away and added to the confusion, scaring pedestrians and shoppers.

Doctors referred six persons who were seriously hurt to a medical institute in Soura for specialised treatment. Among them were the two women who succumbed to “shrapnel wounds”, inspector-general of police Javed Mukhdoomi said.

“Doctors had battled hard to save the two women who had lost lot of blood,” said a senior doctor at the institute.

Deputy inspector-general of police, central Kashmir range, H.S. Lohia visited the spot. “It is a desperate attack on the part of the militants. We will nab those involved in the attack soon,” he said.

No militant outfit has claimed responsibility for the attack.