A car bomb and rocket attack by Kurdish militants in Turkey killed two police officers and wounded 35 people in the southeastern province of Mardin on Friday, security sources said.

The bomb blast, blamed on Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, caused significant damage to a traffic police station and neighbouring housing in the town of Nusaybin, near the Syrian border, the sources told Reuters.

A clash broke out between police and militants after the explosion, which occurred around 6 a.m. (0400 GMT). Security force reinforcements, along with ambulances and fire engines, were sent to the area, the sources said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

A ceasefire between the PKK and the state collapsed last July and attacks on Turkey's security forces have since increased amid a surge in violence in the predominantly Kurdish southeast. Hundreds of people have been killed.

Two soldiers were killed in a clash in the Idil district of the neighbouring province of Sirnak, which borders both Syria and Iraq and has seen some of the heaviest violence, the Dogan news agency said.

It also said Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had arrived in the province for a brief visit.

Violence has also increased elsewhere in Turkey. A suicide car bombing targeting military buses in Ankara killed 29 people last month. The government said that attack was carried out by a member of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia with help from the PKK.

Turkey has also become a target for Islamic State militants, who are blamed for three suicide bombings - one last year in the town of Suruc near the Syrian border and another in the capital, Ankara, and one in Istanbul in January. Those attacks killed more than 140 people.

The PKK, considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, launched a separatist armed rebellion against Turkey in 1984. More than 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, have since been killed.