Some 12 people were killed and two others injured on Saturday when militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) ambushed a minibus in southeastern Turkey, local officials said.

The incident took place when the Kurdish rebels attacked the minibus carrying the 14 people who were returning to their village in Sirnak province near the border with Iraq.

The PKK militants ordered the passengers out of the vehicle and gunned them down with automatic weapons, killing 7 village guards and five civilians, and injuring two others, according to the officials.

The ambush came only one day after Turkish Interior Minister Besir Atalay and his visiting Iraqi counterpart Jawad al-Bulani signed an anti-terrorism agreement aimed at cracking down on PKK separatist rebels.

The PKK has increased attacks on Turkish troops in southeastern Turkey, which led to rising Turkish demands for an incursion into northern Iraq to crush the rebels based there.

The group, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the EU, 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.

(Xinhua News Agency September 30, 2007)