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Days after a massacre, Lassa Koul's wooden crutches still lie under the tree where it all happened, half a dozen sandals scattered around. Coating the ground is a layer of autumn leaves, splotched red with blood.
Last Sunday, gunmen came into this isolated Hindu village and ordered everyone from their homes. The gunmen gathered villagers in a clearing beneath the tree and shot them at close range. Of the 54 people who lived here, 24 are now dead.
The killings devastated Nadimarg, a collection of red brick houses set amid rice fields and apple trees sprouting spring buds. The victims ranged from 65-year-old Koul, who lost a leg in a long- ago road accident and hobbled out on his crutches, to a 2-year-old boy named Manu.
For the Hindus of Kashmir, the only majority Muslim state in overwhelmingly Hindu India, what happened here could change everything.
Many worry that the massacre -- blamed on Muslim militants -- could end centuries of quiet commonality that tied Hindus and Muslims together amid one of the world's bloodiest insurgencies.
"We can't stay here," said Vijay Kumar Bhat, a teacher who returned from a trip to find his entire extended family of eight murdered. "I can't stay in this house. Everyone is dead."
Now, many remaining Kashmiri Hindus...