SRINAGAR, Kashmir — Gunmen opened fire on a busload of Hindu pilgrims in Kashmir on Monday, killing at least seven people and threatening to ignite tensions in a region already deeply divided between Hindus and Muslims.

The pilgrims were returning from a Himalayan shrine when unidentified militants attacked a police patrol and a security checkpoint, and then fired on the bus near the village of Botengoo, according to Muneer Khan, Kashmir’s inspector general of police. At least seven pilgrims, most of them women, were killed, and 16 others were wounded, three of them critically.

The assault was the first major attack on pilgrims in the area since 2000, when 30 people were killed.

“We have no words to condemn this violence,” said Naeem Akhtar, the minister for public works in Kashmir. The All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a coalition of Kashmiri separatist groups, said in a statement that the attack “goes against the very grain of the Kashmiri ethos.”