Firefight at Kashmir mosque

Indian army soldiers patrol a village in southern Kashmir near Srinagar, India

JAMMU, India (CNN) -- Indian security forces Thursday traded shots with suspected Islamic militants -- killing at least three -- holed up in a mosque and a nearby house in Indian-administered Kashmir, a police source said.

At least nine Indian security personnel were wounded in the firefight.

Earlier, police had estimated that as many as six militants were in the two buildings. Indian sources said they believe the other militants had escaped into the surrounding area.

Indian soldiers and police have set up a security cordon in the town of Banihal -- about 180 kilometers (110 miles) east of Jammu -- but reopened the highway through the town, according to Jammu's superintendent of police.

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It is not unusual for Islamic militants to take shelter in mosques because troops of the Hindu-dominated Indian government are reluctant to stage a full-scale assault on a religious facility.

The firefight took place along the route of a Hindu pilgrimage to the cave-shrine of Amarnath, high in the Himalayas. The pilgrimage was to resume Friday after being suspended earlier this week in the wake of an explosion at a building in Kashmir's Anantnag district, 80 km southeast of Srinagar, that reportedly housed pro-Indian militants.

A festival associated with the pilgrimage is scheduled to begin Monday.

Since 1989, a Muslim separatist revolt has raged in Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority province in predominantly Hindu India.

New Delhi has accused Pakistan of funding and training the militants it accuses of carrying out a series of attacks against Indian targets, including a daring raid on the Indian parliament last December.

Pakistan denies the Indian charges, saying that it gives only moral support to groups fighting what it calls a "freedom struggle" in the disputed Muslim majority region of Kashmir.

The Himalayan region has been the trigger for two of the three wars between the nuclear-capable neighbors India and Pakistan since the two were created by Britain's partition of the subcontinent at independence in 1947.