JAMMU, India -- Five suspected Muslim guerrillas were killed in clashes in India's troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir, Indian police said on Wednesday.

The disputed Himalayan region has been at the center of a tense military faceoff between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan since a December attack on India's Parliament that India blamed on Pakistan-based guerrillas.

Separatist violence has continued unabated since then.

A police official said three militants were killed late on Tuesday in a clash between separatists and Indian security forces in Poonch district, 255km (160 miles) north of Jammu, the state's winter capital, Reuters reported.

In another incident, two militants from the banned pro-Pakistan Lashkar-e-Taiba group were killed by village defense committee members on Tuesday in Doda district, 170km (105 miles) east of Jammu.

Nearly a dozen militant groups are fighting India's rule in the country's only Muslim majority-state where authorities say about 30,000 people have been killed in more than 12 years of conflict.

India accuses Pakistan of stoking the rebellion by arming militants and sending them across the border. Islamabad denies the charge, saying it only provides political and moral support to what it calls the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination.

India said on Monday Muslim guerrillas were still crossing into its part of Kashmir, despite demands that Pakistan stop rebel infiltration as a step to end the four-month standoff.

The two countries, who have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region since independence from Britain in 1947, have massed nearly a million men and weapons along their border since the Parliament attack.

India controls 45 percent of Muslim-majority Kashmir, Pakistan just over a third and China the remainder.