BAGHDAD, Nov 21: Four people were killed, including a child, and 20 others injured on Friday in a grenade attack on a stall in south Baghdad selling alcohol during Ramazan, hospital officials said.

“An hour and half ago, someone threw a grenade onto the stall in Bayaa Street and ran off,” said Zaher Turki, head of security at the main hospital in the Yarmuk district of the capital.

Turki said there had been threats against several alcohol shops in the area, a mixed neighbourhood of Sunni and Shia Muslims where the influence of fundamentalist Shia preacher Moqtada Sadr runs high.

A shop owner in Bayaa Street, Ahmad Hussein, said warnings from people he described as “Islamists” against alcohol stalls have increased during Ramazan.

The grenade was hurled at a group of six stalls on a sidewalk corner, added Ahmad, who owns an electronic games shop.—AFP