Turkish air raids move across Iraq border

Turkish helicopter gunships attacked abandoned villages inside Iraq today in the first raids since the recent escalation of border tensions.

Meanwhile, Kurdish guerrillas killed four Turkish soldiers in south-eastern Turkey.

More than 50 Turkish troops have been killed in a series of hit-and-run attacks by Kurdish rebels since late September. Turkey says it has killed dozens of rebels.

The airstrikes came before dawn on abandoned villages near Zakhu, an Iraqi Kurdish town near the border with Turkey. There were no casualties.

A spokesman for the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, said sporadic clashes had been taking place inside Turkey since yesterday.

US authorities have agreed to share intelligence about positions of Kurdish rebels with Turkey, possibly enabling the Turkish military to carry out limited assaults.

“The United States has declared the PKK as the common enemy. The struggle against this enemy will be maintained until it is eliminated,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the Turkish parliament today.

Tens of thousands of Turkish troops have massed in the country’s Southeast ahead of a possible operation in Iraq.

Kurds are a major ethnic group straddling four Middle Eastern countries - Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria – totalling about 20 million people.

Most live in Turkey, primarily in the south-east, where the PKK has been fighting for autonomy since 1984 in a conflict that has killed nearly 40,000 people.