Six rebels suspected of involvement in the deaths of five soldiers were reported to have died in clashes with a commando unit Friday in the southeastern province of Sirnak near the border with Iraq.

Two policemen, one a senior officer, were killed and two others injured Saturday when a mine exploded in the province of Elazig, about 400 kilometres (250 miles) northwest of Sirnak, the CNN-Turk television station reported, quoting military sources.

Security forces used helicopters Friday to mount an attack on a group of eight separatist militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Sirnak, two kilometres (just over a mile) from where five Turkish soldiers were killed on Tuesday.

Two of the soldiers died in a mine explosion and a further three were killed by rebels.

Two of the rebels escaped under cover of darkness and the army is now combing the majority Kurdish mountainous region of south-east Anatolia, the sources added.

A seventh rebel was killed in a rural area near Batman, 180 kilometres (110 miles) northwest of Sirnak in a security sweep, the Anatolia news agency reported. It said that 25 kilogrammes of explosives had been found at the site of the fighting.

In Elazig, the policemen who died, one of them a lieutenant-colonel, were killed in a mine attack on a convoy. The colonel commanding the force was one of the two injured.

The funerals last week of rebels killed by Turkish security forces sparked several days of riots in Anatolia.

Twelve people were killed in the worst urban unrest in the country for years and a further three died when PKK sympathisers threw petrol bombs in Istanbul, in the northeast of the country.

Turkish police have arrested a man they believe was behind a deadly bomb attack that killed five people in the seaside resort of Kusadasi last July, Anatolia reported.

Yilmaz Orhan, chief of police in the western Turkish province of Aydin where the suspect was questioned, said the man had admitted the offence.

"The suspect, according to his confession, placed four kilos of C-4 explosive under the seat of a minibus and exploded the bomb by calling from a public telephone to a mobile telephone connected to the explosive," Orhan said.

"We have solved an important matter," he said, quoted by Anatolia.

The suspect, identified only by the initials MSF, was arrested in Elazig, southeastern Turkey, on his return from a training camp organised by the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Anatolia reported, citing anonymous police sources.

Five other people were arrested in Kusadasi on suspicion of being accessories to the bombing. Police had to disperse an angry crowd shouting anti-PKK slogans as the suspects were driven to court in the town.

Five people, among them a young British woman and an Irish teenager, were killed and 13 injured when the bomb exploded on a minibus in Kusadasi.

The PKK, branded a terrorist organisation in Turkey and the West, has been waging an armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast since 1984. The conflict has claimed some 37,000 lives.