Diyarbakir - Security officials said Turkish planes and helicopters bombed Kurdish guerrilla positions in northern Iraq yesterday in a volatile sideshow to the UN arms inspection crisis with Iraq.
He said F-16 jets from the main south-eastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir had launched the attacks on the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Turkish Kurd group with camps in north Iraq. Later in the day US-made Cobra attack helicopters also struck at targets in the mountainous region, the official said. Turkey often strikes at the PKK in the rugged region, a western-protected enclave nominally controlled by Iraqi Kurdish factions since shortly after the 1991 Gulf War.