Charges include violation of laws on demonstrations, and one of operating and membership of an armed group -- a reference to the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), accused of orchestrating the riots.

Possible sentences on conviction range from three years to a maximum life imprisonment.

The latest charges bring the number indicted so far to 265, including 80 minors who could face up to 24 years imprisonment.

Riots erupted in Diyarbakir, main town of the Kurdish region, last March 28 after youths demanding vengeance attacked the police following the funerals of PKK rebels killed in fighting with Turkish armed forces.

A total of 16 people, including three small boys, were killed when security forces opened fire and used tear gas to disperse crowds, which attacked the police with Molotov cocktails and vandalized public buildings and shops.

Three women were crushed to death in Istanbul when Kurdish rioters set a city bus ablaze with a petrol bomb.

Court officials said legal proceedings were in progress against 171 people, of whom 135 were in detention.

The prosecution has already charged suspects with offences including membership in an armed organization, damaging public property, preventing public servants from carrying out their duties, and breaching the law on meetings and demonstrations.

Ankara has accused the PKK, which has fought for Kurdish self-rule in the region since 1984, of deliberately pushing hundreds of children into clashes with the police in a bid to discredit the government.

The Kurdish conflict has claimed more than 37,000 lives 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.