Fighters from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fired machine guns at police outside a station in Silopi, near the border with Iraq, on Wednesday, killing one officer and critically wounding another, a security official said.

The wounded officer was rushed to a hospital in Diyarbakir, the main city in the Kurdish majority southeast, before succumbing to his injuries on Thursday, a hospital source said.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the international community, took up arms in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed some 45,000 lives.