Turkish war planes overnight carried out a new wave of air strikes against targets of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the country’s southeast, the army said Tuesday.

Turkish war planes overnight carried out a new wave of air strikes against targets of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the country's southeast, the army said Tuesday.

"Seventeen targets of the separatist terrorists were hit with precision and neutralized" in the Hakkari province on the border with Iran and Iraq, the army said.

The strikes appeared to be in retaliation for a succession of attacks in Turkey on Monday that killed six members of the security forces, which were blamed on the PKK.

Ankara is pressing a two-pronged "anti-terror" offensive against militants of the Takfiri group, ISIL (so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Levant), and PKK militants following a wave of attacks in the country. But, so far, the air strikes have overwhelmingly concentrated on the separatist Kurdish rebels.

Turkish war planes have for over two weeks bombed targets of the PKK in their strongholds in the remote mountains of northern Iraq as well as southeastern Turkey.

On Monday, four Turkish police officers were killed in a roadside bombing in the southeastern Sirnak province while a Turkish soldier was killed in a rocket attack on a military helicopter.

Meanwhile, in Istanbul a senior police officer in charge of the city's bomb disposal department was killed in clashes that followed a suicide bombing.

While the government blamed the PKK for that attack, it was also claimed by a small leftist group, the People's Defence Units (HSB), on its Twitter feed.