"Terrorist acts committed in Turkey are directly influenced by what is happening in Iraq," General Ilker Basbug said on a visit to the main town in the mainly Kurdish southeast Anatolia region of Turkey.

"When military necessity requires, (Turkey) can at any time take whatever measures it deems appropriate against the separatist terrorist organisation in northern Iraq."

Basbug said he had come to "assess the situation" in the region ahead of likely new clashes with guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) with the arrival of spring.

He was speaking to journalists after he visited a military hospital caring for people wounded in combat with the rebels.

According to security sources two local militiamen were killed Friday in Siirt province and a PKK member was shot dead in the Sirnak region near the border with Iraq.

Basbug claimed that Kurdish rebels had begun infiltrating back into Turkey from Iraq with the melting of the snow on the mountains.

He estimated that between 3,500 and 3,800 were in camps in Iraqi Kurdistan, while some 1,200 had stayed in Turkey over the winter.

Turkey accuses the Iraqi Kurdish autonomous region's government of supporting anti-Turkish Kurdish guerrillas, and is showing increasing impatience with the failure of US-led troops in Iraq to act against them.

Washington has warned Ankara against carrying out raids against the PKK in Iraq, fearing they will destabilise one of the sole relatively calm areas in that country.