Blast injures 12 soldiers in southeast Turkey

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Aug 12 (Reuters) Twelve soldiers were injured, three of them seriously, today when Kurdish guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb in southeast Turkey, military officials said.

They said militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) planted the bomb on a country road in the Eruh district of Siirt province near the border with Iraq and exploded it as a minibus carrying the troops passed by.

Soldiers launched an operation in the region to capture the rebels.

Roadside bombs have become an increasingly common tactic of the PKK which launched a separatist insurgency in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey.

More than 30,000 people have died in the conflict.

Last week Turkey won promises from Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to crack down on the rebels who use northern Iraq as a base from which to launch attacks in southeast Turkey.

REUTERS JT KP1746