Around 100 people, including members of Turkey's main Kurdish political movement, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), crossed the Iraqi border in the southeast to pick up the bodies of the slain militants, security sources said.

Thousands had marched to the border area in Sirnak province over the past two days to collect the bodies of the rebels, killed last week in a military operation backed by helicopter gunships while trying to cross from Iraq.

The guerrillas belonged to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a 26-year separatist war on Ankara and has rear bases in the mountains of northern Iraq, using them as a springboard for attacks on Turkish territory.

There was brief face-off between the group bringing home four of the bodies and soldiers at the border, but the authorities eventually took the bodies after presenting papers from a prosecutor, witnesses said.

Meanwhile police clashed with demonstrators in Kurdish-majority southeast Turkey and Istanbul, home to a large community of Kurdish migrants, as thousands took to the streets to protest the killings.

Demonstrators hurled petrol bombs and firecrackers at the police in Diyarbakir, the main southeastern city, while the security forces responded with tear gas and water cannons, an AFP reporter at the scene said, adding that scores were detained.

A crowd, including local politicians, attempted to hold a march in downtown Siirt, but was stopped by the police.

Clashes erupted also at a demonstration in Batman.

In Istanbul, some 500 people staged a sit-in om Istiklal Avenue, the city's main pedestrian area, and clashes erupted with police in the nearby neighbourhood of Tarlabasi.

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