The attack late Friday targeted police buildings including lodgings in Pervari, Siirt province, during a power outage, the governor's office said in a statement, carried by Anatolia news agency.

The militants from the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) attacked the buildings with rockets and then gunfire, sparking clashes that lasted for about an hour, the statement said.

Five policemen and three soldiers were wounded, one of them seriously, it said.

The three soldiers, on guard outside a neighbouring army facility, were injured by shrapnel, the military said on its web site.

The PKK has significantly stepped up violence since its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan said through his lawyers in May that he was abandoning efforts to seek dialogue with Ankara.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and much of the international community, took up arms for self-rule in the Kurdish-majority southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed some 45,000 lives.