Turkish security forces killed 10 militants of the banned Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) in clashes in eastern Turkey on Sunday, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.

A military operation near Ortacanak village in the predominantly Kurdish province of Bingol, which started three days ago and is still going on, left 10 PKK rebels dead, according to the report.

The Turkish military has recently launched several cross-border attacks to fight against PKK separatists, who use the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq as a launch pad for attacks against Turkey.

The PKK, listed by the United States and Turkey as a terrorist group, took up arms against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the southeast. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the over-two-decade conflict.

(Xinhua News Agency February 4, 2008)