Three militants of the banned Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) were killed in operations in eastern Turkey launched by the Turkish security forces, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported on Thursday.

The clash erupted between the security forces and a group of PKK members in rural area near Cicekli village in Tunceli province, leaving the three PKK militants dead, said the report.

The report added that the operations fighting against the PKK are continuing in the region.

Turkish Daily News reported on Thursday that Turkey had sent more tanks to its border with Iraq on Wednesday in a military build-up that is fueling U.S. concern about a possible cross- border operation into northern Iraq against the PKK.

A group of 20 tanks loaded on trucks emerged from army barracks in Mardin near Syria and headed towards the Iraqi border in southeastern Turkey, already the scene of a major army offensive against the PKK, said the report.

On Tuesday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey would launch a cross-border operation into northern Iraq in fighting against the PKK.

On May 22, a suicide bomb blast ripped through a crowded shopping center in the Ulus district of Turkish capital Ankara, killing seven, including the bomber, and injuring about 100 others. Officials believed the PKK was behind the attack.

PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, launched an armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking decades of strife that has claimed more than 30,000 lives.

The intensity of the fighting eased after PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured and imprisoned in 1999, but flared up again in recent years.

Source: Xinhua