TUNCELI (Reuters) -- Turkish security forces said on Saturday they had killed 17 members of an outlawed extreme leftist group in renewed violence in the country's troubled east.

A statement from paramilitary forces said they also wounded three members and seized ammunition belonging to the Maoist Communist Party People's Liberation Army (MKPHKO) in Erzincan and Tunceli provinces.

The statement said about 2,000 security forces backed by assault helicopters encountered the militants in the rugged Ovacik region between Tunceli and Erzincan on Friday night.

The operation continued into Saturday, a military official said, without elaborating.

The office of the Tunceli governor said the total number of militants involved was between 40 and 50.

Local sources said the group was formed in 2002 when the outlawed Turkish Workers and Peasants Liberation Army (TIKKO), violently active in Tunceli area from 1970s through 1990s, was disbanded.

The clash followed the killing of four people, two of them members of the security forces and two militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), on Friday in Turkey's southeast.

The PKK has been fighting since 1984 for an ethnic homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeast. More than 30,000 people, mostly Kurds, have been killed in the conflict.

The Turkish military said last month that PKK guerrillas were stepping up attacks in Turkey after a large number of them had been detected smuggling explosives from northern Iraq.