Four Turkish soldiers were killed on Wednesday in a bombing blamed on Kurdish militants in the restive southeast, the local governor's office said.

Another four soldiers were injured when a handmade bomb detonated as an armoured vehicle drove past in the Yuksekova district of Hakkari province, the governorate said in a statement.

It blamed a "separatist terrorist organisation" - the official term for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

The PKK has waged an insurgency in Turkeyinfo-icon since 1984, during which over 40,000 people have been killed. The group is blacklisted as a terrorist organisation by Ankara, the United Statesinfo-icon and the European Unioninfo-icon.

After the collapse of a two-year ceasefire in 2015, Turkish military operations intensified while there are frequent PKK attacks on soldiers in the southeast.