DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Sept 22, (Agencies): Three security officials were killed in two seperate attacks attributed to Kurdish rebels in east and southeast Turkey, local security sources said on Thursday.
Clashes with Kurdish rebels late Wednesday in a town in Van province in eastern Turkey resulted in the death of two Turkish security forces and left three others wounded, added the sources.
The operation was continuing in the area, they added.
Another attack by a Kurdish rebel in the center of Diyarbakir in Turkey’s southeast, densely populated by Kurds, killed one police officer, said the sources.
The rebel fired at police with a Kalashnikov rifle, also wounding two civilians and another police officer.
The assailant ran away after the attack, according to security sources.
The attacks by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) have dramatically increased since early summer.

Turkey has threatened to launch a military incursion against the bases of PKK in northern Iraq amid a spate of attacks also targeting civilians.
The Turkish air force has repeatedly bombed PKK targets since Aug 17. The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, took up arms in Kurdish-majority southeast Turkey in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives.
A radical Kurdish group claimed responsibility Thursday for a bomb attack which killed three people in the centre of the Turkish capital Ankara and threatened more.
In an email sent to the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) said it carried out Tuesday’s attack and warned: “It is only a beginning.”
The group threatened to spread violence to urban areas, after a wave of deadly rebel attacks on army and police units in the southeast.
“Everywhere is a target,” it said.

The bomb, which went off outside the administration offices of the capital, also injured at least 15 people.
Turkish officials say TAK is a front used by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, especially when attacks claim civilian casualties.
The PKK has said TAK is a splinter group outside its control.
TAK claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in November 2010 at Istanbul’s busiest spot, Taksim Square, which wounded 15 police officers and 17 civilians.
Kurdish rebels fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey have recently escalated their attacks on Turkish targets.
Three security officials were killed in two separate attacks in east and southeast Turkey, on Wednesday and Thursday.
The successive assaults come days after Turkey’s government threatened to launch a ground assault on PKK camps across the border in northern Iraq.
The Turkish air force has repeatedly bombed PKK targets since Aug 17. The PKK took up arms in Kurdish-majority southeast Turkey in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives.
The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons also claimed responsibility for a small bomb attack in the Mediterranean resort town of Kemer that wounded 10 people, including four Swedes on Aug. 28, Firat said.
The group vowed more assaults in retaliation for what it called Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government’s “war” against the rebels, according to Firat.
Turkish warplanes have carried out airstrikes on suspected PKK targets in northern Iraq — where the guerrillas maintain bases — following stepped up attacks by Kurdish rebels in recent months. Dozens of members of the security forces and at least seven civilians have died in rebel attacks since July.
The PKK itself has denied any role in the Ankara bombing. The main Kurdish rebel group has always distanced itself from violent attacks by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons in Turkish cities. The militant Kurdish group was responsible for a series of bombings in Turkish resorts in the 1990s.
Earlier, suspected PKK rebels killed one policeman and wounded another one in an attack in the country’s southeast, authorities said.
The rebels opened fired on the policemen as they chatted with shop owners in Diyarbakir, the largest city in the Kurdish-dominated southeast, said city’s governor, Mustafa Toprak. Two civilians were also wounded in the shooting.
The attack came a day after Kurdish rebels killed one soldier and two pro-government village guards in an ambush in the eastern Van province, according to the governor’s office in Van. That was hours after about 2,000 Turkish troops launched an operation against Kurdish rebels in the mountainous Tunceli province, further west, and Turkish jets reportedly bombed rebel bases in northern Iraq.
In an expanding crackdown on Kurdish rebel sympathizers, police on Thursday detained 30 people in the Aegean port city of Izmir, the state-run Anatolia news agency said. Police have rounded up more than 50 Kurdish suspects in the southeast earlier this week.