Officials were searching for the remains of six missing villagers and one soldier during digs at seven different spots near Dargecit town in the Mardin provice, the sources told AFP.

The excavations in areas identified by relatives of the missing villagers in search of potential mass graves is now over, they added.

In January, the remains of 23 people were found in a mass grave in Kurdish majority Diyarbakir province, on the former site of military police headquarters.

Human rights activists claim the remains belong to civilian Kurds killed by security forces during the 1990s.

Around 45,000 people have died since the mid-1980s when the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) took up arms for a self-ruled homeland in southeast Turkey.