Three Turkish soldiers were killed and several were wounded in attacks by the separatist Kurdish group PKK in Turkey's troubled southeast region, security officials said yesterday.

A mine blast killed two soldiers and wounded five others yesterday near a police station in the mountainous area of Bingol province about 100 kilometres north of Diyarbakir, the biggest city in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.

The police station had been the target of an attack by Kurdish rebels late on Thursday. "An operation has been launched in nearby mountains to catch the rebels," an official said.

In a separate attack yesterday on an army post in the eastern Turkish province of Tunceli, a soldier was killed and another was injured, army sources said. Turkish security forces have been battling rebels of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the southeast for more than two decades in a conflict that has claimed more than 30,000, mostly Kurdish, lives.