Police also seized explosives in a car near Diyarbakir, the regional capital of the mainly Kurdish southeast, and detained two suspected militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), media reports said.

The fresh clashes come amid an escalation in rebel attacks since late May in their 26-year violent campaign for self-rule.

Three Kurdish rebels, including a woman, were killed in a security sweep in a mountainous area in Hakkari province, which borders Iraq and Iran, governor Muammer Tumer told Anatolia.

In the eastern city of Van, Kurdish rebels fired on the local governor's office, sparking a clash with police that left three PKK militants dead.

Two police officers sustained light injuries in the fighting, the agency said.

In Agri province, also in the east, a soldier was killed in a clash in a mountainous area near the town of Dogubayazit while a soldier was wounded when PKK rebels attacked a police building in Dicle town, near Diyarbakir, it added.

In Ergani town, which is also near Diyarbakir, police stopped a car upon a tip-off and found plastic explosives wired for detonation by remote control, the mass-circulation Hurriyet newspaper reported on its website.

Police destroyed the bomb in a controlled explosion and detained two suspected PKK rebels in connection with the explosives, it added.

There has been a significant rise in rebel attacks since jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan said in late May that he was abandoning efforts for dialogue with Ankara to seek a peaceful end to the conflict and the rebels called off a unilateral truce in early June.

Blacklisted as a terrorist group by both Turkey and much of the international community, the PKK has been waging an armed campaign since 1984 for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast in a conflict that has claimed some 45,000 lives.