SRINAGAR, India: A soldier and three suspected militants, including the nephew of a top Pakistani Islamist leader, were killed in a gun battle in Kashmir, officials said Tuesday.

Indian forces surrounded a home in the southern town of Pulwama late Monday after being tipped off about the presence of senior commanders from the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) group.

“Three terrorists belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammad outfit and an army soldier were killed in the encounter which raged last night,” Munir Ahmad Khan, inspector general of police, told AFP.

Two of the militants killed in the firefight were Pakistanis and one Indian, police said.

One of the dead militants was identified as Talha Rasheed, nephew of JeM founder Maulana Masood Azhar.

“Maulana Talha Rasheed along with two mujahideen embraced martyrdom in a clash with the Indian army in Pulwama on Monday,” a source from the militant group told AFP.

Indian forces seized weapons and ammunition including an assault rifle used by Nato forces in Afghanistan, the first of its kind detected in Kashmir, police said.

The skirmish was the latest in a string of deadly shootouts between Indian forces and suspected insurgents amid an upsurge in violence in the restive Himalayan region.

India accuses Pakistan of sending militants into Kashmir to attack its forces.

Islamabad insists it provides diplomatic, not armed, support to Kashmiris and backs their claim to self-determination.

Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly civilians, have died in an armed insurgency that erupted in 1989.

Rebel groups, including the JeM, have for years fought the roughly half a million Indian soldiers deployed in the region, demanding that Kashmir be granted independence or merged with Pakistan.

Indian accuses JeM of staging attacks in Kashmir and elsewhere, including a deadly strike on the Indian Parliament in 2001 that brought the two neighbours to the brink of war.

Azhar, who is believed to be living in Pakistan, founded JeM after being released from an Indian prison in 1999 in exchange for 176 passengers being held hostage aboard a hijacked Air India plane.

Last week, India failed in its second attempt to get Azhar blacklisted by the UN after China blocked a resolution to declare him a global terrorist.