ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish police on Thursday shot and killed a suspected Kurdish militant who was allegedly planning to detonate a bomb that was strapped to his body, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Police, acting on information that the militant was planning to carry out an attack, stopped a taxi he was riding in at a checkpoint near the town of Viransehir in the southeastern province of Sanliurfa, the agency reported. A police officer shot and killed the man before he was able to detonate the explosives, it said.

The agency said the militant was a Syrian national and a member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK, or the Syria-based Kurdish group that is affiliated with it. The militant, who wasn't identified, had allegedly sneaked into Sanliurfa from Syria with explosives.

The foiled attack came as a car bomb went off at a checkpoint across the border in a Turkish-controlled area of northeastern Syria, killing at least two Turkish soldiers and two local security officers, Turkish officials said.

It wasn't immediately clear if the two incidents were connected.

The PKK has led a decades-long insurgency in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast region and is considered a terror organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict since it started in 1984.