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Suspected Islamic militants dressed in army uniforms gunned down 24 Hindus in Indian-administered Kashmir, police said Monday, as the troubled region reeled from a new upsurge in violence.

The massacre prompted Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee Monday to call an emergency session of his cabinet security committee, a government official said.

Ten to 12 heavily armed militants entered the village of Nadi Marg, some 54 kilometers (33 miles) south of the summer capital Srinagar, late Sunday pretending to be soldiers, police official M.A. Amjum told AFP.

The gunmen rounded up the villagers before spraying them with automatic weapons and fleeing into nearby forests, he said. Among the dead were 11 women and two children.

Amjum said the militants overpowered six policemen protecting the village, which is situated on a hillock, and snatched their weapons before launching the raid.

A wounded survivor, Chunni Lal, 58, said the gunmen had knocked on his door late Sunday night and ordered him and his wife out, saying they were conducting a search operation for rebels.

Lal said he feigned death after being shot by holding his breath until the gunmen had left.

As news of the massacre spread, people began arriving in the village Monday in droves, weeping, wailing and cursing the killers.

The security forces have launched a major operation to hunt down the gunmen, A.K. Suri, a senior Kashmir police official, told AFP.

The massacre is the latest in a series of mass killings in the disputed state in the past year. The most serious incident, the killing of Indian soldiers and their families in Kaluchak on May 14, brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.

India accuses Pakistan of sponsoring the militants who have been carrying out a 14-year insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir, while Pakistan says it merely provides moral support.

India says more than 37,500 people have been killed in the unrest since 1989, although the separatists put the death toll twice as high.

Muslim-majority Kashmir is divided between Indian and Pakistani controlled zones, and is claimed in full by both countries.

Sunday's killing comes amid a surge of bloodletting in Kashmir in the past week and is the second largest attack on non-Muslim Kashmiris in the region.

A total of 37 Sikhs were gunned down in the town of Chattisinghpora on March 20, 2000, on the eve of a visit to India by then US president Bill Clinton.

The violence has intensified since the onset of spring, with police saying routes used by militants to infiltrate Indian Kashmir from the Pakistani zone of the divided state which had been snowbound were now opening up again.

On March 17, militants launched an attack on a police post in which 13 people were killed, ending a relative lull that had marked the winter months.

In the week that followed, at least 38 people died in violence, mostly rebels killed by police.

Some civilians have also been killed by the rebels, including senior Muslim rebel leader Abdul Majid Dar who was shot dead at point blank range at his brother's house in the northern Kashmiri town of Sopore on Sunday.

The Nadi Marg killings will come as a major blow to attempts by Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, who took office in November, to lure Kashmiri Hindus back to the restive state.

Some 200,000 Hindus fled Kashmir in 1990, soon after the insurgency began.

The Panun Kashmir, an organisation of Hindu migrants, expressed shock over Sunday's massacre and urged Indian Kashmir's governor to intervene with Sayeed to prevent the relocation of migrants currently living in camps in southern Kashmir and in New Delhi.

Sayeed had been seeking to relocate Kashmiri Hindus -- known as pandits -- back to their homes in the northern Kashmir valley.

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