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SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir (CNN) -- A 22-hour standoff between Indian security forces and a group of heavily-armed militants ended Thursday morning, leaving a total of seven police officers, one civilian and two militants dead, police said.
"During the mopping up operations after the two holed up militants were killed this morning we have recovered five more bodies from inside the hotel building," said Farooq Ahmad, the deputy inspector general of police.
The recovered bodies were found after a "fierce gun battle" fought between the militants, police officers and CRPF (central reserve police force) troopers, Ahmad said.
Three other police officers were killed during earlier shootouts with the militants. Approximately 16 people, including 11 police officers, sustained injuries and were treated at the city's main hospital.
The standoff began Wednesday after militants opened fire and threw grenades at a guard post outside a makeshift battalion headquarters of the Indian paramilitary CRPF, before fleeing the scene, police said.
At least 200 people fled from the hotel during the initial exchanges between police and militants. The militants also lobbed grenades at the force, police said.
During the clashes, a spokesman for the militant group Al-Mansoorian called a local news agency and claimed responsibility for the violence.
"Three of our Mujahideen carried out the attack," he reportedly said.
Following the fighting police used teargas and batons to disperse hundreds of locals who gathered in protest and marched in the surrounding area.
The attack is the biggest in recent months in Srinagar, which has seen almost daily street protests during the past week after a Delhi court fixed October 20 as the date for hanging a Kashmiri man, convicted for his role in a 2001 attack on the Indian parliament, the Reuters news service reported.
About a dozen groups have been fighting for Kashmir's independence from India or its merger with neighboring Pakistan over the past 15 years, resulting in more than 65,000 deaths, most of them civilian.
India accuses Pakistan of aiding and arming the militants at training camps on the Pakistani side of Kashmir -- a charge Islamabad strongly denies. In India's only Muslim-majority state, most people favor independence from Hindu-majority India or a merger with mostly Muslim Pakistan.
Both India and Pakistan claim the divided Himalayan region in its entirety and have fought two wars over it since the two nations split in 1947. However violence has abetted since India and Pakistan launched a peace process in 2004. Last month, leaders of the two nations decided to set up a joint agency to fight terrorism.
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