A spokesman for the Kurdish regional administration, Jamal Abdullah, denied the report but said two Turkish warplanes dropped flares Monday in the mountains near Zakhu.

But Col. Hussein Tamir, an Iraqi Army officer who supervises border guards, said the airstrikes occurred before dawn on abandoned villages northeast of Zakhu, an Iraqi Kurdish town near the border with Turkey. There were no casualties, he said.

A spokesman for the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, corroborated Tamir’s account of the airstrikes, and said sporadic clashes had been taking place inside Turkey since late Monday. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.

Witnesses also said the Turkish bombing lasted half an hour in the villages.

“I was on the other side of the mountain when I heard huge explosions and could smell TNT powder all over the area,” said 53-year-old Ibrahim Mazori. A shepherd, Mazori said he sometimes spends a night or two in the villages while tending his sheep.

Several hours after the dawn airstrikes, about a dozen warplanes and at least two helicopters were seen taking off from an air base in Diyarbakir, southeast Turkey. It was unclear where they were headed.

Iraqi officials said helicopter gunships were responsible for the morning raids, while Turkish media reported warplanes were involved.

It also was the first major Turkish action against Kurdish rebels since Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met President George W. Bush in Washington earlier this month.

Subscribe to The China Post and save.  Click hereSharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Enter your comments - 800 characters max

Receive China Post promos

Respond to this email