Nine persons, including a Central Reserve Police Force soldier, were injured when militants hurled a grenade in a busy market in Pulwama town of south Kashmir on Thursday afternoon, official sources said.

They lobbed a grenade towards a CRPF vehicle near a bus stand around 1235 hours, which exploded injuring eight pedestrians and a CRPF soldier, the sources said.

The sources said the blast caused panic among the people who had descended in large numbers to the township for shopping on the eve of Eid-ul-Fitr.

The police and security forces immediately cordoned off the whole area and the injured were shifted to the hospital, where the condition of three of them was stated to be critical, the sources said.

No outfit has claimed responsibility for the grenade explosion so far.