Two soldiers, five rebels killed in SE Turkey

TUNCELI, Turkey, Apr 29 (Reuters) Two Turkish soldiers and five Kurdish guerrillas have been killed in the past two days in clashes in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey, a security official said today.

''The military anti-terrorist operation is going to widen to cover five provinces and will continue for a long time. Troops are backed up by helicopters,'' the official said.

Yesterday, a governor's office in the region said another soldier had died of injuries received in a rebel ambush earlier in the week.

Turkish security forces have battled PKK guerrillas since the group launched its armed struggle for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Violence is much lower than it was at the height of the separatist conflict in the 1980s and 1990s. But clashes have increased in recent months as rebels cross into Turkey from hideouts in the mountains of neighbouring northern Iraq.

Turkey's top general has urged the government to approve a military incursion into mainly Kurdish northern Iraq to help crush an estimated 4,000 PKK militants hiding there.

REUTERS KK RK1725