DIYARBAKIR: Eight police officers died and nine were wounded in a roadside mine blast Sunday blamed on Kurdish rebels in Turkey's southeast, local security sources said.

The members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) launched the attack around 0715 GMT Sunday as a police vehicle was passing in the Karliova district of Bingol province, the sources said.

The latest attack comes amid an ongoing army operation against Kurdish rebels in the southeast that has been concentrated in the Semdinli district in Hakkari province and has included nearly 5,000 ground troops, according to the Turkish military.

Twenty-eight Kurdish rebels were killed in operations in the last three days, the local governor's office said on Sunday.

The PKK, considered a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the international community, took up arms in the southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives.

Turkish fighter jets also occasionally violate Iraqi airspace to strike PKK hideouts in the north of Iraq. The army announced earlier that an airstrike inside northern Iraq in early September killed 25 rebels.