DIYARBAKIR (Turkey), Dec 25: Kurdish rebels launched a deadly attack in southeastern Turkey hours after the Turkish and Iraqi prime ministers vowed a fresh clampdown on the separatists, officials said on Thursday.

Three soldiers were killed and another nine wounded, four of them seriously, when rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) armed with automatic weapons attacked an army vehicle, the local officials said.

The attack late on Wednesday in the village of Cizre, near the borders of both Iraq and Syria, came hours after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan held talks in Ankara with Iraqi counterpart Nuri al-Maliki.

The prime ministers vowed to step up their cooperation against Turkish Kurdish rebels whose presence in neighbouring northern Iraq has cast a shadow over relations.

The thorny issue of PKK rebels taking shelter in Iraqi mountains along the border was at the centre of their talks.

“We should not allow terrorist organisations, in particular the PKK, to weaken our relations,” Maliki said.

Erdogan said the fight against “terrorism” was a common issue for the neighbouring nations. “Our joint fight will continue,” he said.

Maliki later told reporters that a mechanism of three-way talks between Iraq, Turkey and the United States, set up last month, was tasked with doing “what is necessary... against any activities by the PKK.” “We have a common understanding that it is a terrorist organisation,” he said.

Hundreds of militants from the PKK are holed up the mountains of northern Iraq, which they use as a launching pad for cross-border attacks on Turkish targets.

Turkish warplanes have since last year bombed rebel hideouts in the region.

Ankara has often accused the Iraqi Kurds, who run an autonomous administration in northern Iraq, of tolerating and even aiding the rebels.

But in a policy shift earlier this year, it said it would seek to resolve the issue through diplomacy and intensified contacts with the Iraqi Kurds, whom it had long snubbed.

Iraqi Kurds are now included in the three-way talks.

A senior Turkish official said on Wednesday Ankara “sees signs” that the Iraqi Kurds are willing to cooperate against the PKK.

On the eve of Maliki's visit, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, gave fresh assurances that both Baghdad and the Kurdish administration of northern Iraq were determined to purge the region of the PKK.—AFP