[NYTr] Turkey Says 150 Killed in Strikes on Iraqi Kurds

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The New York Times - Dec 25, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/26/world/europe/26turkey.html

Turkey Says 150 Killed in Strikes on Rebel Kurds

By SEBNEM ARSU

ISTANBUL — Two Turkish airstrikes on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq
hit more than 200 targets and killed more than 150 rebels, the Turkish
Army said Tuesday.

The air raids, on Dec. 16 and 22, were the first large scale assaults
on Iraqi territory since the Turkish parliament approved a cross border
operation in mid-October to curb rebel hideouts in Iraqi’s northern
mountains.

Members of the P.K.K. have denied the Turkish Army’s claims, dismissing
reports of any dead or wounded.

The report came as the Turkish military confirmed it had launched an
operation early Tuesday in Sirnak’s Kupeli Mountain region in
southeastern Turkey. A Turkish Army statement said five rebels were
killed, including two women. Military helicopters joined the hunt in
the early morning after sources confirmed a rebel group preparing an
attack, the statement said. An army unit later destroyed the group’s
hideout, and confiscated weapons, explosives, a mobile phone and a
large store of basic provisions. it said.

Turkish officials have not commented reports by the Kurdish
administration in northern Iraq that another airstrike took place on
Monday. But Turkish surveillance planes were spotted early Tuesday
flying over Cukurca in the Hakkari Province of Turkey’s far southeast,
along the border with Iraq, and also above the Kanimasi region in
northern Iraq, and shelling was heard, the semi-official Anatolian news
agency reported.

The report on the Dec. 16 and Dec. 22 airstrikes by the Turkish Army
included black and white aerial footage and still photographs that the
military said showed targets before and after the bombings. The
statement said that Turkish fighter planes hit 22 targets in the
Metina, Zap, Avashin and Hakurk regions in Iraq on Dec. 16, after
intelligence confirmed that the rebels, known as the P.K.K., had a
presence at the sites.

Eleven locations around the Qandil Mountains, where the P.K.K.’s
central command is based, were also heavily damaged, including several
training bases, antiaircraft platforms, warehouses and weapons stored
in hideouts, the army claimed.

The Turkish military, however, reiterated on Tuesday that around 150 to
175 rebels in unsheltered locations and hideouts were killed, and that
a large number of injured were taken to nearby hospitals in Erbil,
Raniya, Kaladiza and Choman.

Administrators in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq
have denounced the Turkish airstrikes and reported that civilians were
wounded. The Turkish military strongly denies those assertions,
dismissing them as propaganda supporting the P.K.K.

“It is clear that such baseless claims encouraging terror, the common
enemy of humanity, can only harm those who fabricate them,” the Turkish
Army statement said.

The United States has supported Turkey’s strikes at the P.K.K., which
both Turkey and the United States consider a terrorist organization,
and has been providing intelligence to help Turkey’s operations against
the group.

But American officials have tried to discourage large-scale attacks
into Iraq, fearing that they could further weaken the Iraqi government.

Meanwhile, Turkish fears are growing that the rebels might cross the
border from Iraq to strike at civilians, as they have in the past when
under sustained attack.