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JAMMU, India, July 15 (Reuters) - The winter capital of India's troubled Jammu and Kashmir state braced for a general strike on Monday to protest against the killing of 27 Hindus gunned down by unidentified gunmen during the weekend.

The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which heads India's federal coalition, called for the strike in six districts which make up the Jammu region, but residents said the likely response was unclear as the dead were migrants.

Saturday's attack by gunmen disguised as Hindu holy men threatens to stoke fresh tension between India and Pakistan, barely two months after a militant attack on an Indian army camp took the nuclear-armed neighbours to the brink of war.

That attack, also on the outskirts of Jammu, killed 34 people.

The BJP has asked all businesses, schools, offices and public transport to shut down to protest against the killing of the migrant labourers, who lived in a slum on the edge of Jammu city.

Police in Jammu, a city of 800,000 people, said they would be out in full force to prevent any trouble during the strike.

Strike calls in the past, usually called by Kashmiri separatist groups, have witnessed incidents of stone-throwing and burning of tyres on roads to enforce a shut down.

Local residents, however, said they were not sure of the response to this strike call as the victims were migrant labourers from the northern Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and not locals.

NO GROUP CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY

No militant group has claimed responsibility for Saturday's attack and New Delhi has refused to pin blame for the incident.

But police in Jammu said the attack could be the work of Pakistan-based Muslim guerrilla groups fighting Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan region.

Indian Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, who visited the site of the attack, said he would make a statement in parliament when it convenes for its first sitting of the monsoon session on Monday.

Kashmir is at the centre of the standoff between mainly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, who have fought two of their three wars since independence from Britain in 1947 over the region.

Pakistan, which has pledged to stop militants crossing into Indian Kashmir, condemned the killings and said the attack was aimed at destabilising South Asia.

India has long accused Pakistan of arming and training militants, who are fighting Indian rule in its part of divided Kashmir.

About a dozen Islamic groups are fighting Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state.

Violence associated with the revolt has killed tens of thousands people since it began in 1989. Officials put the toll at more than 33,000 people. Separatist groups put it at 80,000.

Relations between India and Pakistan took a turn for the worse after militants attacked India's federal parliament in December. India blamed the attack on Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatists. 

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