Two Islamic militants and an Indian soldier were killed during a gunbattle along the border that splits Kashmir between India and Pakistan, the Indian military said Sunday.
"The fighting erupted late Saturday when a group of militants tried to cross the Line of Control in (southern) Poonch district," an army spokesman said, referring to the de facto border.
"Soldiers foiled an infiltration bid by killing two militants," the spokesman said, adding a soldier also died during the fighting.
The latest clash came as regional police chief Kuldeep Khuda told reporters late Saturday that about 700 militants were active in Kashmir.
Muslim rebels launched an insurgency in 1989 to secede Kashmir from India and join it with neighbouring Pakistan or make it an independent state.
Thousands of Kashmiri youth joined the insurgency in the initial years but numbers dropped after India launched a tough counter-insurgency campaign.
The unrest has so far left more than 47,000 people dead by official count. Human rights groups put the toll at 60,000 dead and 10,000 missing.
Khuda said the number of active militants included people who had earlier surrendered to troops.
"But their number is negligible," he said, adding that 2009 was likely to end with the lowest "ever incidents of violence" since 1989.
Overall in the state, the number of insurgency-related deaths has fallen to around one daily from a peak of 10 in 2001.
The fall in violence comes against the backdrop of a slow-moving peace process between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan to settle the future of the disputed region, which both claim in its entirety.
India paused the dialogue after last November's Mumbai attacks, in which 166 people were killed in a three-day rampage by Islamist gunmen.
