Turkish officials say security forces killed 15 rebel Kurds, all of them women, during clashes Saturday in the country's southeast.

The Interior Ministry says the fighting between security forces and members of the Turkish rebel group the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, took place in a rural part of the mainly Kurdish province of Bitlis. The ministry says a local guard was also killed.

The PKK, listed by Turkey and many other members of the international community as a terrorist group, took up arms against the government in 1984 in its fight for autonomy in the country's southeast. The 28-year conflict has claimed more than 40,000 lives.