A prosecutor ordered Wednesday an excavation in Cemisgezek, Tunceli province, to find the remains of some 20 people, allegedly members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Revolutionary People's Salvation Party-Front (DHKP-C).

A relative of one of the missing rebels had applied to the prosecutor's office to exhume the bodies after witnesses reported that they were buried in a mass grave after being killed in clashes with security forces in 1997.

The authorities will test DNA samples from the remains to identify the dead, security sources said.

The excavations were begun at three different points around the town, and Anatolia news agency said the remains of seven people were found near the military police headquarters.

The remains of about a dozen people were found in Mutki town in Bitlis province in the southeast of the country earlier this year. The Turkish army said they were PKK members.

The search for mass graves began in September in connection with the trial of seven people, including a former police colonel, accused of taking part in the summary executions of 20 people during the 1990s, when Kurdish unrest in the region was at its height.

Around 45,000 people have died since the mid-1980s when the PKK took up arms for a self-ruled homeland in southeast Turkey.

DHKP-C, a radical leftist group, is known to cooperate with the PKK in its uprising against the state.