Updated

Turkey's state-run news agency says security operations have ended in two flashpoint districts of the southeast.

Anadolu Agency said Friday counter-terrorism operations have ended in the mainly Kurdish towns of Sirnak and Nusaybin.

Turkey's southeast has witnessed some of the worst violence in years since the collapse of a truce between Kurdish rebels and the state last summer.

The agency said 496 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK were killed in Nusaybin, near the Syrian border.

The office of the governor of Nusaybin said 50 soldiers died there. Anadolu said another 498 rebels were killed near the border with Iraq, in Sirnak.

Throughout the operations, which began mid-March, hundreds of barricades and trenches were dismantled and some 2,792 explosives deactivated.