Charred walls, collapsed tin roofs and smashed windows in a burned Kuki community church illustrate how deadly ethnic violence has led to brutal sectarian attacks in India’s troubled Manipur state.
At least 120 people have been killed since May in armed clashes between the predominantly Hindu Meitei majority and the mainly Christian Kuki in the northeastern state.
The ruins of the Kuki church in Imphal are just one among the more than 220 churches and 17 Hindu temples destroyed in the months of vigilante violence, according to a report by India Today news magazine.
Across the street from the burned church, Baptist priest Zuan Kamang Damai led a service on Sunday with a congregation just a third of its usual size of about 800 after many of his Kuki parishioners fled.

“After this violence erupted, they moved to different places to save their lives,” he said.
“They want to come back, they want to resettle, they want to live with my family,” Damai said. “This is what they responded to me, and I comfort them. God is there.”
Damai is himself a Naga, another major tribal group in the area who have largely been spared in the cycle of revenge attacks.
But many of his regular worshippers are staying away, fearful of the possibility of violence.
“We have to respect each religion — regardless of Christians, regardless of Hindu, Muslim, whatever,” the 55-year-old said.