The Higher Electoral Board (YSK) said it reversed its ruling for six of the seven barred candidates "after a review of fresh court documents presented within the appeal period."

Kurds welcomed the decision with bittersweet joy as one protestor demonstrating against the YSK veto was shot to death allegedly by police Wednesday in Bismil town near the regional capital Diyarbakir.

The tension in Diyarbakir faded Thursday evening after the YSK decision, while small groups celebrated the ruling with fireworks, an AFP reporter said.

"The consequences did not need to be that heavy," said the leader of Turkey's main Kurdish movement Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), Selahattin Demirtas, in his televised remarks, referring to the slain protestor.

Among those who won a green light from YSK to stand in the June 12 parliamentary polls was iconic Kurdish activist Leyla Zana, winner of the European Parliament's human rights award who spent 10 years behind bars before being released in 2004, according to the statement.

They included also two Kurdish members of the outgoing parliament, a prominent politician currently in jail and a well-know leftist intellectual.

Citing past convictions and legal technicalities, the YSK had declared the seven bidders ineligible Monday, setting the scene for street clashes between Kurdish protestors and the police.

The unrest threatened to mar electioneering ahead of the polls and deepen ethnic conflict in EU-hopeful Turkey, which has claimed some 45,000 lives since the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) took up arms in 1984.

The electoral board convened in Ankara to review the appeals as thousands of people took to the streets in the Kurdish-majority southeast for the funeral of the slain protestor and waged pitch battles with the security forces.

A policeman and a school employee were injured in a melee in Batman city when an unidentified person opened fire as police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse demonstrators hurling petrol bombs and stones, Anatolia news agency reported.

The policeman was hit by three bullets, it said.

In nearby Bismil, an estimated 30,000 people marched at the funeral of a protestor killed in clashes the previous day, chanting slogans in favour of the PKK, an AFP reporter said.

The mourners carried the coffin, wrapped in PKK flags, on their shoulders as masked youths shouting "Revenge, revenge!" escorted the procession.

Unrest broke out as militant youths hurled Molotov cocktails and stones at the security forces, who responded with pepper gas and pressurised water.

There were similar scenes of violence in other towns across the southeast as President Abdullah Gul appealed for peace.

"Nothing can be resolved through violence," Anatolia quoted Gul as saying.

"It turned out the documents were incomplete. Since they have been completed now, there should be no problem," he said, in anticipation of the YSK review.

The disqualifications deepened frustration among the Kurds at a time when their parties already face legal hurdles and many activists remain in jail despite a series of reforms broadening Kurdish rights.

Enraged youths torched the Bismil office of the ruling Justice and Development Party Wednesday night, while a bus driver in Diyarbakir was critically injured when his vehicle caught fire from a petrol bomb.

Meanwhile, three PKK militants were killed and another arrested in fighting with the army in Kahramanmaras province, Anatolia reported Thursday.