Turkey attacks Kurds from air

Nothing makes it clear if assaults on rebels took place inside Iraq

— Turkish warplanes joined Sikorsky and Cobra military helicopters in southeastern Turkey on Wednesday in attacks on the broad mountainous passes that Kurdish separatist rebels use to travel from hide-outs in northern Iraq into Turkey, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.

The report did not explicitly state whether or how far the aircraft flew inside Iraqi territory.

The attacks are the first time that Turkish warplanes have been employed in assaults against the Kurdish rebels since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq, and they follow several days of Turkish shelling. The report did not disclose the number of aircraft used. Some unconfirmed news reports said the Turkish aircraft had flown into Iraqi territory.

Residents in the Iraqi Kurdish village of Derishkit told an Associated Press reporter that two Turkish jet fighters struck a target on the banks of the Zey-Gowra River about four miles inside Iraq. They could not offer more details about the apparent attack.

An AP Television News cameraman also saw eight F-16s loaded with bombs and attack helicopters take off after night-fall from a Turkish base in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir. The cameraman also saw about a dozen transport helicopters fly along Mount Cudi near the border with Iraq and at least one warplane fly past Cizre, a town close to the border.

In Baghdad the American second-in-command, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, said he could not confirm that any warplanes from Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, flew into Iraqi airspace. Iraqi airspace is under U.S. control. "I cannot verify it," he said.

A government official briefed about the military's activities Tuesday evening said Turkish soldiers may already have crossed the border - a rocky, uninhabited area - in brief pursuits of the Kurdish rebels before returning quickly after their incursions.

"It is a harsh, rugged region away from residential areas, and in pursuit of the rebels, troops from time to time cross the border for few kilometers, and that's what was mentioned to us," the official said.

The Turks began threatening to send troops into Iraq after months of frustration over raids into Turkey by Kurdish rebels. The Turkish authorities say the rebels have killed at least 42 people within Turkey in the past month, including 12 soldiers in an ambush Sunday.

The report by Anatolia, the semiofficial Turkish news agency, on Wednesday said that warplanes took off from a military base in Diyarbakir and destroyed hide-outs belonging to the rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

Over the past few days, Turkish armored vehicles have rumbled into position along the mountainous border, and Turkish newspapers have reported continuing military operations as helicopters fired at targets near the border and ground troops shelled several villages in northern Iraq.

Amid rising diplomatic tension, the United States and other countries have warned Turkey not to invade Iraq. The NATOsecretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, on Wednesday praised Turkey, NATO's only Muslim member, for showing what he called "remarkable restraint" in its efforts to tackle the Kurdish rebels.

"If I look at the Turkish government as it has acted up till now, I think the Turkish government is showing restraint - remarkable restraint under present circumstances," he told reporters at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in the Netherlands, the Reuters news agency reported.

Pentagon chief Robert Gates, attending the talks in the Netherlands, said he saw little sense in airstrikes or major ground assaults by U.S., Turkish or other forces against rebels in northern Iraq until more is known about their locations along the border.

"Without good intelligence, just sending large numbers of troops across the border [from Turkey] or dropping bombs doesn't seem to make much sense to me," Gates said.

Turkey's national security council, its highest security body, met Wednesday for almost six hours to discuss the situation on the border. Both President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended. A written statement after the meeting called for the government to apply economic measures against "the groups in Iraq that directly or indirectly provide support to the separatist terror organization."

The Sunday ambush, in which the rebels say they tookeight soldiers hostage, provoked large street protests in Turkey and calls for the government to take action. Last week Turkish lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to give the government authorization to send troops across the border into Iraq.

The Anatolia news agency said that Turkish security forces had captured many PKK hideouts and destroyed livestock that they said belonged to the rebels. It did not state whether these were on the Turkish or Iraqi side of the border, but the PKK has hide-outs within Turkey as well as in northern Iraq.

Turkey has expressed growing frustration with Iraq and the United States for failing to curb the activities of the Kurdish rebels who operate unchecked in the autonomous region in northern Iraq and use it as a safe haven for ambushes inside Turkey.

The United States lists the PKK as a terrorist organization, but American military commanders in Baghdad have been loath to devote American military resources to going after the group in the mountainous regions on the border.

Earlier this week the Turkish government presented Iraq a list of demands it wanted carried out to thwart the rebels' activities, including extradition of the rebel group's leaders.

An Iraqi delegation is due in Ankara, the capital, today to present its ideas on solving the crisis.

However, many Turkish lawmakers doubt the Iraqi government's ability to tackle the rebels. They say that only American intervention can solve the problem. "People are at a point beyond waiting for the results of proposals, offers and promises as such," said a member of the ruling AK Party who refused to be identified. "Here we expect the U.S. to do something tangible like returning some leading members of the PKK, closing down their camps. Only the U.S. has the intelligence and the capacity to do that."

On Tuesday, U.S. officials upbraided Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq for what it said was the Kurdish failure to rein in the guerrillas' activities.

Also on Tuesday, Erdogan, on a visit to London renewed warnings that Turkey would take military action against the Kurdish guerrilla bases if diplomatic efforts to restrain the rebels fail.

About 100 members of the official defense forces of Iraq's Kurdish region on Wednesday headed for a camp near the border city of Dahuk, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad.

One of them, who would only identify himself as Capt. Ziad, said his troops had been mobilized from Irbil, capital of the autonomous Kurdish region. "We want to prevent the conflict in Turkey from coming across the border," he said.

Information for this article was contributed by Sebnem Arsu, Graham Bowley and Andrew E. Kramer of The New YorkTimes and Volkan Sarisakal, Christopher Torchia, Douglas Birch and Yahya Barzanji of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1, 7 on 10/25/2007

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