The latest deaths raised to 14 the number of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels killed in the Kupeli mountains in Sirnak province in two days, the statement said.

An army captain had died in fighting Tuesday.

Weapons, ammunition and documents belonging to the militants were seized, the statement said.

The rebels killed Tuesday and Wednesday are believed to have taken part in an October 7 attack on security forces in Sirnak, in which 13 soldiers died, the army said.

Late Wednesday a bomb exploded outside a police station at Diyarbakir, southeast Turkey's main city, but no one was hurt in the blast, Anatolia news agency reported.

An unidentified man lobbed the device at the entrance of the police station around 10:00 pm (2000 GMT). The explosion broke windows in the neighbourhood.

Turkey has massed an estimated 100,000 troops along the border with Iraq, where the PKK takes refuge.

On Saturday, the army said it inflicted "heavy losses" when it struck a group of some 60 PKK fighters in its first raid on northern Iraq since the government gave it the go-ahead last week to conduct cross-border operations.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and much of the international community, uses camps in northern Iraq as a springboard for attacks on Turkish targets across the border.

Faced with mounting PKK violence, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government secured parliamentary approval in October to order cross-border operations against PKK targets if necessary.

After talks with Erdogan at the White House in early November, US President George W. Bush called the PKK a "common enemy" and promised to provide Turkey with real-time intelligence on rebel movements.

Bush's pledge was largely seen as tacit US approval for limited cross-border Turkish strikes, mainly air raids, against the rebels.

The PKK has waged a bloody campaign for self-rule in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey since 1984 in a conflict that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.