The Associated Press later reported that 18 Kurdish fighters were also killed.
The deaths occurred in an attack on Tuesday by fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) on a military post at Yesiltas in the province of Hakkari, which borders the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
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Anatolian quoted the governor of Hakkari as stating that 10 of the attackers had been killed and that military operations in the region are continuing.
Turkey, the European Union and United States consider the the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, as a terrorist organisation. It has been conducting a low level guerrilla war in Turkey's predominantly southeastern provinces since the mid-1980s. For the
past decade, the group has been operating mainly from bases in the mountains of the Kurdish controlled region of northern Iraq.
A similar rebel attack in the same area in late 2007, when 12 Turkish soldiers died, had triggered an eight-day incursion by the Turkish military into Iraq in February 2008. Rebels use northern Iraq as a base from where to launch attacks on Turkish troops.
Tuesday's attack came amid efforts by the government to try to reconcile with the Kurdish minority through granting more cultural rights. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently announced plans to introduce elective Kurdish lessons in schools, after allowing Kurdish language broadcasts on television.
Turkey refuses demands by Kurdish activists, rebels and politicians of full education in Kurdish, fearing that it could divide the country along ethnic lines. An estimated 20 per cent of Turkey's 75 million are Kurds.
