In Mus province, one rebel was killed late Saturday after security forces were tipped off about the passage through the village of Kayalisu of rebels from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Two villagers were also injured in the exchange of fire, local security sources said, adding that two rebels were arrested in the operation.

The second incident, also Saturday evening, occurred in neighbouring Bingol province when rebels and security forces clashed at a vehicle checkpoint, the governor said in a statement.

The rebel killed in that clash was a regional PKK leader of Syrian origin wanted for an attack on a police post in neighbouring Tunceli on Monday that left seven officers dead, the statement said.

The attacks came after three soldiers were killed and four others seriously wounded in an explosion Saturday in another Kurdish area of southeastern Turkey.

The bomb was set off by remote control by Kurdish separatists as a military convoy passed by in Sirnak province, on the mountainous border with Iraq, Turkish security sources said.

In recent weeks, Turkey has strengthened its military presence on the Iraqi border, with no-go security zones and live ammunition manoeuvres seen as signs of a possible cross-border operation to neutralise the PKK.

"We will continue to wage with determination our just war against separatist terrorism ... until the annihilation of the final terrorist," President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said in a statement Sunday carried by the Anatolia news agency.

Iraq lodged an official complaint with Turkey on Saturday claiming it had bombarded Iraq's northern Kurdish region and warning that the attack against Kurdish rebels could destabilise the region.

Turkey says the PKK, whose 22-year insurgency in eastern and southeastern Turkey has claimed more than 37,000 lives so far, is acting under the protection of Iraqi Kurds allied to the United States.