The clash occurred in the province of Sirnak, which borders Iraq and Syria, Education Minister Huseyin Celik, who was visiting the region, was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.

Local officials said the fighting erupted in a rural area near the town of Guclukonak during a sweep that began Thursday against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States.

Celik was speaking at the opening ceremony of a school in Sirnak's Idil town as part of government efforts to boost education in the region plagued by chronic poverty and years of conflict between the PKK and the army.

"We came here to open a school... and we are very upset at such news," he said. "We condemn terrorism."

Unrest in the southeast has risen noticeably this year after the PKK called off a five-year unilateral ceasefire in June 2004.

Officials in Sirnak said earlier this week that police had seized about one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of plastic explosives and detained two PKK militants and seven alleged accomplices in an operation that foiled planned bomb attacks in the town of Silopi.

A quarter of the explosives and a detonator were found at the home of a Silopi town councilor identified by the media as the town's Kurdish deputy mayor Abdulaziz Coban.

Tensions in the southeast escalated last month with a wave of violent protests and riots over allegations that members of the security forces were involved in a bomb attack on a bookstore owned by a former Kurdish guerrilla in the province of Hakkari, which borders Sirnak.

The attack killed one person, and the riots that followed claimed another five lives, rattling the Ankara government at a time when it is under pressure to demonstrate its respect for democracy and the rule of law.

The EU has said the investigation into the bombing will be a test for the supremacy of law in Turkey, which opened membership talks with Brussels on October 4.

The Kurdish conflict in Turkey has claimed some 37,000 lives since 1984, when the PKK took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in the region.