A massacre in Kashmir and fury on the streets of India

For Sunil Singh, there is only one way for India to respond to last week's attack by militants in Kashmir.

- By Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Aakash Hassan

Those terrorists and their supporters should be shot dead, and their houses should be blown up," the shopkeeper said. "We should even use the air force and drop bombs on the residential areas where these terrorists find shelter. There should be a bloodbath in Pakistan to teach them a lesson." Since 25 tourists and one local guide were killed by militants last Tuesday afternoon, as they strolled peacefully through Kashmir's verdant Baisaran valley, much of the Indian public has been baying for vengeance. It was the deadliest attack on civilians in more than two decades in India's restive region of Kashmir. The gruesome details of the attack from survivors - that the gunmen singled out the Hindu men and ruthlessly shot them - sent shock waves of horror across the Hindu-majority country.

Pressure on Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist government to mount a military response has continued to grow. The prime minister promised to "identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backer".

For many in India, that means only one thing: direct military action against their neighbour Pakistan, which for decades has been accused of backing and bankrolling the violent separatist insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir as it claims the territory fully as its own.

The Modi government has said Pakistan has "linkages" to last week's attack and two of the militants allegedly responsible are Pakistani.

The attack was initially claimed by a little-known insurgent group, the Kashmir Resistance Front - which India believes to be a proxy for the Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba terror group - though it later issued a denial. In an attempt to ward off military retaliation Pakistan can ill afford as it struggles with an economic and security crisis, the country's prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, promised a "neutral, transparent probe" into the incident.