Indian troops shot dead a top Muslim militant on Wednesday in a fierce gun battle near a Kashmir forest, police said, making him the third leading insurgent killed by security forces over the last week. Abu Shaheen, who police believe is chief of the banned Pakistan-based militant group, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, was killed along with another militant jointly by army and police in Kupwara district 87-km north of Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital. Three soldiers including an officer were wounded in the firefight, police said.Last week security forces shot dead a senior member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group accused of masterminding the massacre of 35 Hindus in Kashmir last year. Two day later a senior commander of Kashmir's frontline militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen, was shot dead in the region.