Turkey has sent hundreds of elite soldiers across the border into northern Iraq to chase a group of Kurdish guerrillas escaping after a failed attack on a Turkish unit near the border.
The soldiers killed four rebels, the military said, and it did not report any of its own casualties. The soldiers, supported by Turkish warplanes, would remain in northern Iraq, the military said.
"The search operation of the units in the area are still under way," the military said. It did not say when the troops would withdraw.
The military has repeatedly staged air and ground assaults against Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq. The last major incursion was in February 2008, when thousands of ground forces staged a week-long offensive into Iraq.
The military said on its website that three commando companies and one special forces battalion penetrated 2 miles (3 kilometers) into Iraq.
Turkish warplanes also pounded Kurdish rebel positions and mortar and anti-aircraft units deeper inside Iraqi territory on Wednesday, the military said.
The offensive was ordered after the rebels, who had steamed across the border, attempted an unsuccessful attack on troops near the Turkish border town of Uludere, the military said.
"The air operation was monitored from the command headquarters and it was noted that the targets were successfully hit".
The Turkish military estimates around 4,000 rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, are based just across the border in Iraq and that about 2,500 operate inside Turkey.
Last month, Turkey killed at least 19 Kurdish rebels in an airstrike on rebel hideouts in northern Iraq.
The PKK has freely operated in northern Iraq, a semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdish entity since the Gulf War, benefiting from a power vacuum for decades.
The last ground offensive in 2008 yielded mixed results, with many guerrillas making a comeback to bases along the border after the Turkish units withdrew. The incursion also worried the region's Iraqi Kurds who feared that a prolonged Turkish military presence could destabilise the relatively safer Iraqi territory.
Turkey occasionally co-ordinates attacks with Iran on Kurdish rebel bases on Mount Qandil, which sits on the Iranian-Iraqi border and from where a sub-rebel group stages hit-and-run attacks on Iranian targets in a similar war for Kurdish rights in Iran.
Syria long harboured the rebels but forced guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan to leave the country after Turkey threatened war in late 1998, eventually leading to the capture of the rebel chief in 1999.
Earlier this month, Turkey offered greater economic co-operation with Iraqi Kurds, pressuring the region's president, Massoud Barzani, to jointly combat Turkish Kurdish rebel hideouts in northern Iraq that the rebels have used as a springboard for attacks.
Turkey also wants Iraqi Kurds to shut down the Makhmur refugee camp, which houses an estimated 10,000-11,000 Turkish Kurds who fled to Iraq in the early 1990s during fighting between Turkish troops and Kurdish rebels. Turkish authorities accuse Kurdish guerrillas of indoctrinating children in the camp to become rebels.
A Kurdish interior ministry official, however, said there were no plans to close the Makhmur camp. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorised to speak to media.
AP