Turkish police have eavesdropped on thousands of people including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as well as cabinet ministers, the country's spy chief and journalists, local newspapers reported on Monday.

Associates of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen in the police and the judiciary have tapped the phones of Erdogan as well as politicians and businessmen for three years, pro-government dailies Yenisafak and Star claimed.

Turkey's deputy prime minister is to visit Sudan's troubled Darfur region this week to open what is likely Ankara's largest-ever foreign aid project, the Turkish ambassador said Monday.

Ravaged by 11 years of government-rebel warfare along with inter-Arab violence that worsened last year, Darfur has a severe shortage of health workers, a lack of infrastructure, and food scarcity.

The main activist group behind Turkey's mass street protests last year plans to file an "unprecedented" class action lawsuit against the government over deaths and injuries, local media reported on Sunday.

Earlier this month, a Turkish court dismissed charges of founding a crime syndicate against members of the Taksim Solidarity Platform, the organizer of the demonstrations that turned violent as police launched a brutal crackdown.

A car bomb explosion hit a hospital on Syria's border with Turkey Sunday, killing two people and wounding several more, a monitoring group said.

A teenager and a medic working with rebel groups were killed in the car park blast close to the Orient hospital near the rebel-held border town of Atmeh, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Turkish riot police in Istanbul fired tear gas and water cannon Saturday at around 3,000 people protesting new legislation tightening control of the Internet.

Police took action to push protesters away from the city's Taksim Square, a focal rally point, an Agence France Presse reporter said.

Turkey's spy agency eavesdrops on more than two thousand people, mostly foreigners, the deputy prime minister said on Saturday as parliament debated controversial new espionage powers.

"As of today, National Intelligence Organisation (MIT) eavesdrops on 2,473 people. More than half of them are foreigners," Besir Atalay told reporters in Ankara.

Turkey's interior ministry said 1,000 police officers have been removed in the wake of a major corruption probe against key government allies but said these were only "routine" re-assignments.

The government has embarked on a mass purge of police and prosecutors in the wake of the probe launched on December 17 targeting several members of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's inner circle.

Turkey's parliament passed a law Friday abolishing specially appointed courts that have convicted hundreds of military officers for coup plotting.

The conciliatory move toward the military, proposed by the Islamic-rooted ruling party, comes as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is grappling with a high-level corruption scandal that has implicated his entourage and dragged down some of his ministers.

At least six people were killed when a car bomb exploded at a border crossing between Syria and Turkey on Thursday, a Turkish official told Agence France Presse.

The official said the bomb detonated on the Syrian side of the Bab al-Salama crossing, adding that 45 people were wounded.

Turkey's government has submitted a bill to parliament to give the country's spy agency more sweeping powers, a parliamentary source said Thursday.

The bill aims to give the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) the authority to carry out missions and surveillance both in Turkey and abroad without the need for a court order.