Four villagers were killed by Kurdish militants in eastern Turkey today in the first guerrilla attack on civilians in the region for nearly four years.
Officials have warned in recent months that hundreds of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters have slipped back into Turkey from camps in northern Iraq since the war.
"The organisation has returned to its old days. They are trying to frighten citizens," a security officer said.
One other person was also wounded in the attack, which occurred overnight in a mountainous part of Bingol province, he said. The Turkish military said it had boosted its presence there in response to the attack.
Fear of a resurgence of violence in southeastern Turkey, scene of a bloody Kurdish separatist campaign in the 1980s and 1990s, was a major reason why predominantly Muslim but secular Turkey opposed the war in neighbouring Iraq in March.
More than 30,000 people, mostly Kurds, have died since the PKK, now known as KADEK, began its fight for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. But fighting dropped off sharply with the 1999 arrest of PKK commander Abdullah Ocalan.
Ocalan urged his followers to forsake violence and instead seek cultural rights for Turkey's Kurds by political means. Most of the guerrillas withdrew to northern Iraq.
Northern Iraq has enjoyed broad autonomy since Iraqi Kurds wrested control from Baghdad in the wake of the 1991 Gulf war.
Turkey fears the US-led war across the border will encourage Iraqi Kurds to build upon the partial autonomy, creating an independent state, in turn reigniting separatism among its own estimated 12 million Kurds.