Suspected Kurdish militants have kidnapped three Chinese engineers in southeast Turkey near the border with Iraq and Syria, security sources said on Monday.

The workers were seized at a shop in the border town of Silopi late on Sunday by suspected members of the Kurdistan Workers Party, also known as the PKK, who went on to attack a power plant construction site where the engineers worked, the sources said.

Xinhua News Agency quoted a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Turkey as saying the engineers "disappeared" after a thermal power plant in Silopi, which is being constructed by China Machinery Engineering Corp, was attacked by militants at 9 pm local time on Sunday.