Six Turkish soldiers were injured, it said, in the clashes that followed February's threat by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to call off a unilateral truce it declared in August 2010.

Acting on a tip-off that militants had sneaked in from neighbouring Syria, the soldiers confronted the group in a rural area in the Mediterranean province of Hatay, the agency reported.

The militants responded to calls to surrender with gunfire and seven were killed in the ensuing fighting.

The governor's office said in a statement the militants belonged to the "separatist terrorist organisation" -- the official reference for the PKK, which has waged a bloody 26-year separatist war on Ankara.

The security forces also seized rifles, hand grenades, rocket-launcher munition and four kilogrammes (8.8 pounds) of plastic explosives, the statement, carried by Anatolia, added.

The PKK in the past has carried out other attacks in Hatay, which is close to but not part of the mainly-Kurdish southeast.

Last year, the rebels fired rockets at a naval base in Hatay, killing seven soldiers.

Local authorities, meanwhile, announced that six soldiers were injured in confrontations with Kurdish fighters in the province of Osmaniye.

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

Fighting in Kurdish-dominated Anatolia, in southeastern Turkey, has lessened significantly since the truce, which the PKK had extended in November until general elections expected in June to push for a peaceful solution of the 26-year-old conflict.