There was no immediate official word on the cause of the blast but police sources said it might have been a bomb.

The explosion occurred under a car parked in the center of the town of Cizre, near the border with Iraq.

No other details were immediately available.

Southeastern Turkey has been the theater of a bloody Kurdish rebellion since 1984, when the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), blacklisted as a "terrorist" group by Ankara, the European Union and the United States, began fighting for Kurdish self-rule in the region.

The conflict has claimed more than 37,000 lives.