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India is blaming Pakistan for an attack in which gunmen killed 26 men, mostly Hindu tourists, in disputed Kashmir. As NPR's Diaa Hadid reports, Pakistan denies responsibility while India has suspended a decades-old water treaty.
DIAA HADID, BYLINE: Soldiers patrolled roads and streets in Indian-controlled Kashmir. They search cars as helicopters patrolled the skies in footage shared by Indian media.
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HADID: It came after gunmen shot dead 26 men in a meadow, mostly Hindu tourists. Eyewitnesses say the gunmen asked the men if they were Muslims before killing them. They also said some Muslim residents helped survivors flee to safety. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi cut short a foreign trip and vowed those behind the attack would be brought to justice. Then the foreign secretary Vikram Misri announced India's water treaty with Pakistan was suspended.
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VIKRAM MISRI: Until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism.
HADID: That treaty divides six major rivers between India and Pakistan, and it's lasted despite decades of strife and wars over Kashmir. India also expelled military advisers in the Pakistani embassy in New Delhi.
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MISRI: They have a week to leave India.
HADID: India pointed the finger at Pakistan after a group called the Resistance Front claimed the attack. India considers it a proxy for militants backed by Pakistan's army. Pakistan says it has no connection to the attack. Its deputy prime minister says the country's national security committee will soon convene. Many Kashmiri Muslims have long opposed India's heavy-handed rule, which human rights groups say includes widespread arrests, torture and killings. Sushant Singh, a lecturer in South Asian studies at Yale and a former Indian military officer, told NPR that while there was a religious element to this attack...
SUSHANT SINGH: This is about grievances that have been bred for too long. This is about the way the Indian state has conducted itself.
HADID: He says those factors, alongside a desire among militants to spread terror, have created this situation, a situation which observers say may well escalate further.
Diaa Hadid, NPR News, Mumbai.
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