Fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a banned separatist group, opened fire with automatic weapons on a police car in the eastern town of Pazarcik, provincial official Mustafa Sarikaya said, according to the Anatolia news agency.

One policeman in the car was killed on the spot, the official agency quoted Pazarcik as saying.

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