IRAQ:Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish guerrilla targets in northern Iraq yesterday, Turkey's general staff said, in the fourth such cross-border raid in five days.
The Turkish military said its offensive against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) inside Turkey and across the border in northern Iraq would continue.
"Fighter jets belonging to the Turkish armed forces successfully hit targets belonging to the terrorist organisation in the early hours of December 26th," the general staff said.
Eight hideouts and caves in the Zap valley occupied by the separatist PKK were hit, it added.
Jabbar Yawar, spokesman for the Peshmerga security forces of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region, said the raid lasted about an hour in a mountainous border region of Dahuk province and inflicted no casualties.
In a separate incident, six PKK members were killed in clashes with troops in the Turkish border province of Sirnak yesterday.
Nato member Turkey says it has the right under international law to hit the rebels, who take shelter in northern Iraq and mount attacks which have killed dozens of Turkish troops in recent months.
Turkish aircraft also struck targets across northern Iraq on Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday. The campaign began with a larger bombing raid on December 16th that killed more than 150 PKK guerrillas, according to the military. Hundreds of ground troops and long-range artillery have also been involved. Hundreds of civilians have fled Iraqi villages in the border area and Iraqi Kurdish officials have said civilians were killed. Turkey has denied this.
Turkey has massed up to 100,000 troops, backed by warplanes, artillery and tanks, near its mountainous border with Iraq.
Turkey's government authorised the military last month to launch cross-border operations following what it said were insufficient steps by Iraqi authorities against the PKK.
Violence in Iraq has dropped by 60 per cent since June but security remains fragile. The Iraqi government and US forces say they support Turkey's right to strike at the PKK but want any action to be co-ordinated with them and small in scale to avoid destabilising northern Iraq.
The United States has begun providing Turkey with intelligence on the PKK in northern Iraq. Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of nearly 40,000 people since it began an armed struggle for a separate Kurdish homeland in 1984.-