Gunmen lined up and fatally shot 40 Sikh villagers in India’s disputed northern territory of Kashmir. The killings cast a pall over the start of President Clinton’s visit to the country. Monday night’s shootings were the first major attack on Sikhs in Kashmir. Until now, the minority religious group has been spared from an Islamic rebellion that began a decade ago in Kashmir, a Himalayan region divided between India and Pakistan along an uneasy ceasefire line. Concentrated in a handful of towns and villages, most Kashmiri Sikhs have remained neutral in the conflict, many of them running trucking companies that supply the remote region, the only Muslim-majority territory in otherwise Hindu-dominated India. Indian army officers had warned they expected a major operation by pro-separatist militants as a way to focus attention on the Kashmir dispute during Clinton’s visit.