Militants of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) opened fire on the Bagdere gendarme station in the southeastern town of Silvan late Monday, killing one soldier, the general staff said in an online statement.

Five militants were killed in the ensuing fighting, which also left two soldiers and three civilians wounded, it said.

In a separate incident, two PKK rebels were killed and another captured in northeast Turkey, the statement said.

The fighting took place overnight in a rural area in Gumushane province, it said, adding that the security forces seized three guns.

Gumushane is not a region where the PKK is usually active, but the group, which has dramatically stepped up violence this month, has threatened to spread its attacks outside the Kurdish-majority southeast, its main area of operation.

PKK attacks claimed the lives of 12 soldiers at the weekend, most of them killed when dozens of rebels assaulted a border unit at the Iraqi frontier early Saturday.

The assault, which prompted a Turkish air raid on PKK hideouts in neighbouring Iraq, triggered a nationwide outrage and mounted pressure on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Errdogan's government for tougher measures against the PKK.

The violence has dealt a heavy blow on an already faltering initiative by Erdogan's government, announced last year, to expand Kurdish freedoms in a bid to discourage separatism and cajole the rebels into laying down arms.

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