Suspected Islamic militants raided a village and killed 22 Hindus after lining them up outside their homes in the disputed Indian territory of Kashmir.
Five others were wounded in the attack which happened last night in Thava, a village 105 miles northeast of Jammu in India's Jammu-Kashmir state.
Some villagers rushed to a nearby Indian army camp to seek help, but according to police, the assailants fled the village by the time security forces reached the area.
No one has claimed responsibility for Sunday night's killings. But Mr Sheesh Pal Vaid, inspector-general of police said, "It is definitely a terrorist attack," meaning that police suspect that Islamic militants were to blame.
Nearly a dozen insurgent groups have been fighting for Kashmir's independence or its merger with Pakistan since 1989.
Earlier on Sunday, police found the bodies of four Hindu cattle grazers who were abducted over the weekend by suspected Islamic militants.
The bodies were recovered near Basantgarh, a village in Udhampur district in India, nearly 60 miles north of Jammu.
The fate of five other missing cattle grazers was not immediately known, Mohanty said. They were abducted from the village on Saturday.
The attack at Thava came three days before the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was scheduled to meet Kashmiri separatist leaders in New Delhi in an effort to find a solution to the decades-old Kashmir dispute.
India and Pakistan, which both claim Kashmir in its entirety, have been observing a cease-fire along the Line of Control dividing Kashmir between them since November 2003. They have been holding talks since 2004 to resolve the decades-old Kashmir dispute, but the progress has been slow.