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Twelve Kurdish rebels, two soldiers killed in southeast Turkey

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, April 12, 2006 (AFP) - Twelve separatist Kurdish rebels and two Turkish soldiers were killed in fighting in a mountainous corner of the country's southeast, security officials said Wednesday.

The clashes with rebels from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) erupted late Tuesday and continued throughout the night in the Besta-Dereler region of Sirnak province, which borders both Syria and Iraq, the sources said.

The fighting was the latest episode in the mounting violence in mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey over the past few weks that has seen deadly riots in urban areas and clashes between the army and the PKK in the countryside.

More than 37,000 people have been killed since 1984 when the PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group by Ankara, the European Union and the United States, took up arms for self-rule in the southeast.