The rebels, killed in fighting in the provinces of Mardin and Hakkari, included senior members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has led a bloody 25-year insurgency in the region, unnamed sources told Anatolia news agency, without specifying when the operations took place.

The PKK meanwhile claimed responsibility for an attack on an army vehicle that killed seven soldiers and wounded three in northern Turkey this week.

The group said on its web site that Monday's ambush in Tokat -- far from the Kurdish-majority regions in the southeast where the PKK is usually active -- was "an act of reprisal" for Turkish military operations, and for what it described as the worsening conditions of its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.

The latest unrest has added to tensions between Ankara and its Kurdish community, fuelled last week by violent protests over claims that Ocalan's conditions on the prison island of Imrali had worsened. Ankara denies the claims.

The fighting has also marred a government drive to mend fences with the Kurds.

Ankara has pledged reforms to expand Kurdish freedoms in a bid to erode popular support for the PKK, which it considers a terrorist group, and end the conflict in the southeast, which has claimed some 45,000 lives.

The climate was further strained Tuesday as the constitutional court began final deliberations on whether to outlaw the Democratic Society Party, Turkey's main Kurdish political movement, on charges of links to the PKK.

Turkish military officials contacted by AFP were only able to confirm that operations against the PKK were under way.

Iranian security forces also targetted the rebels, Anatolia said, without elaborating.

Hakkari province lies in Turkey's southeastern corner where the country's borders with Iran and Iraq meet.

The PKK has a sister group in Iran and many militants are holed up in bases in the mountains of northern Iraq, from where they sneak into Turkey and Iran.

Turkish and Iranian forces have in the past carried out simultaneous military action against PKK rebels in northern Iraq, targeting them with artillery fire across the borders.

In a related development, nine militants who abandoned PKK camps in northern Iraq surrendered to the Turkish authorities at the border crossing between the two countries late Wednesday, judicial officials said.

They were being questioned there Thursday.