Five Turkish soldiers and one special forces police officer were killed Saturday in a bomb attack blamed on Kurdish militants in the southeast of the country.

Five Turkish soldiers and one special forces police officer were killed Saturday in a bomb attack blamed on Kurdish militants in the southeast of the country, the Dogan news agency reported.

The members of the security forces were carrying out a military operation in Nusaybin in the southeastern Mardin province when a bomb left by militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was detonated, it said.

Nusaybin has been under curfew since mid-March for a military operation to push the PKK out of the town, where the authorities say the group dug trenches and put up barricades.

The new attack comes two days after seven police were killed and 27 others wounded by a massive car bomb attack on a police bus in Turkey's main southeastern city of Diyarbakir.

Turkish authorities on Saturday detained the suspected perpetrator, named as A.C., of that attack, which was claimed on Friday by the military wing of the PKK.

The bombing was not a suicide attack but remotely detonated, officials said at the time.

In other violence blamed on the PKK overnight, one civilian was killed and 18 people wounded in an attack on a military sub-station in the Kiziltepe district of Mardin province, the army said.

The civilian killed was reportedly a Syrian who had been working on a building site project.

Turkey has been shaken this year by two attacks in the capital Ankara claimed by Kurdish militants that killed dozens and two bombings in Istanbul blamed.