Three of the dead were children, one aged only three, and most of the injured were security forces in the clashes officials blamed on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged an armed battle against the central government since 1984.

The brunt of the violence was in this city of 550,000, the biggest in Turkey's mainly Kurdish-populated southeast, with lesser incidents shaking the nearby city of Batman.

More than 300 rioters were arrested during the incidents Ankara has partly blamed on the Denmark-based Kurdish-language Roj TV channel, which according to officials recently broadcast appeals for civil disobedience and for shops here to close down.

Shopkeepers who ignored the call saw their businesses ransacked by rioters who set fire to banks, threw up barricades and attacked reporters.

The unrest began Tuesday when thousands of demonstrators confronted security forces after the funeral here of four of 14 alleged PKK militants killed two days previously in a gunbattle with Turkish army troops.

The funerals rapidly turned into violent demonstrations of support for the PKK and its jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in the most intense protests here since the mid-1990s, when the rebel group was at its most active in combatting central government forces for Kurdish independence.

Funerals of Kurdish militants killed in clashes with the army often turn into pro-PKK demonstrations and media reports that seven more were killed Friday in a gunbattle near Silopi, on the border with Iraq, raised fears of renewed unrest.

Violence in the area abated after Ocalan's capture in Kenya in 1999, when the PKK -- considered a terror group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union -- proclaimed a unilateral truce that lasted for five years.

Many of its armed militants then found refuge in the mountains of northern Iraq and officials say they have been regularly infiltrating back into Turkey since the end of the truce in June 2004.

Violence has mounted incessantly since, despite a spate of reforms by Ankara to improve the lot of the country's approximately 12 million Kurds, mostly in a bid to ease its attempt to join the EU with which it launched membership talks in October.

Contrary to past practice, police here appeared to avoid any use of disproportionate force against pro-PKK demonstrators in an apparent bid to keep relations on an even keel with the EU, already leery at the prospect of admitting a relatively poor Muslim nation of 70 million in its ranks.

The situation here was relatively calm on Friday, with many shops reopening as highly visible police, gendarmerie and army units patrolled the city.

Diyarbakir's popular Kurdish Mayor Osman Baydemir, under a legal probe since Thursday on charges of making pro-PKK statements, appealed for calm on Friday.

"I call on all citizens to cease their actions and go back home," he appealed before journalists.

On Thursday night, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said "no illegal acts will be tolerated" and ruled out any dialogue with the PKK -- a key demand of PKK sympathisers.

Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu, in town for a first-hand look at the situation, vowed that "those who provoke these incidenrs will be captured and exposed" before being brought to trial.

"These acts target democracy and stability" in Turkey, he said.

The media repeated calls Friday on the government to stand firm against what it called "provocations" by the PKK.

"A country that is proceeding on the path to EU membership and courageously implementing reforms should not bow to what is happening," commented an editorialist in the English-language Turkish Daily News.