[NYTr] Turkey Says 200 Rebel Kurd Targets Hit

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AP - Dec 25, 2007
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TURKEY_KURDS?SITE=VABRM&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Turkey Says 200 Rebel Kurd Targets Hit

By C. ONUR ANT
Associated Press Writer

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) -- Two Turkish airstrikes this month destroyed
more than 200 Kurdish rebel targets in the mountains of northern Iraq,
killing hundreds of insurgents, the military said Tuesday.

Up to 175 rebels were killed on Dec. 16 alone, the military said in a
statement posted on its Web site. The military said other hideouts were
hit in a cross-border airstrike on Saturday, followed by artillery fire.

In Iraq, a Kurdish official said information from the rebels cast doubt
on Turkey's claims.

"These are exaggerated figures," said Mahmoud Uthman, a Kurdish leader
and member of parliament. "Most of the villages (that were attacked)
were abandoned."

Iraqi officials said the Dec. 16 operation - the first confirmed by
Turkey since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 - violated Iraqi
sovereignty. That operation was followed by an incursion by ground
forces, who spotted a group of Kurdish rebels preparing to cross into
Turkey.

"A total of 33 sets of targets (more than 200 individual targets)
exclusively used by the terrorists were hit by our warplanes and our
artillery," the statement said of the Dec. 16 operation.

The Turkish military released photographs and footage it said were shot
from planes before and after the air assaults. Most of the pictures
were too blurry to distinguish spots marked as rebel facilities, but in
some, purported camp areas and demolished buildings were visible.

The last confirmed offensive across the Turkish-Iraqi border came this
past Saturday, when Turkish airplanes entered Iraqi air space and
bombed suspected rebel targets.

A spokesman for Iraqi Kurdistan's Peshmerga security forces said
earlier that Turkish fighter jets also bombed Kurdish rebel targets in
northern Iraq on Sunday.

But a U.S. official in Ankara said Tuesday that there was no evidence
of a Sunday air assault. The official spoke on condition of anonymity
because he was not authorized to release the information.

In an earlier statement, the military said it was hard to determine
precisely how many rebels died in recent attacks but put the figure in
the hundreds.

In a province inside Turkey near the Iraqi border, Turkish troops
backed by helicopter gunships killed five Kurdish rebels on Tuesday,
the military said in a separate statement posted on its Web site.

Officials in Iraq have claimed civilians were killed in the attacks,
but the Turkish statement said any reports of civilian casualties were
a fabrication and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said
civilians were not targeted.

"Air operations or ground operations - we will do whatever necessary
within the limits of what international law allows us to do," Erdogan
told legislators from his ruling party on Tuesday. "Civilians have
never been our targets."

The U.S. has been providing intelligence to Turkey on the Kurdish
rebels since a Nov. 5 meeting between Erdogan and President Bush, who
said the rebel group was an enemy of the U.S., Turkey and Iraq.

A coordination center has been set up in Ankara so Turks, Iraqis and
Americans can share information. The Dec. 16 airstrike was due to
intelligence shared by Washington.

"The Kurdish leaders ... feel betrayed by the Americans," Uthman said.
"There are discussions now with the American side to try to halt these
operations. The Americans are the only ones who can halt them," Uthman
said.

The rebel group Kurdistan Workers' Party, also known as PKK, has waged
a war for autonomy in parts of Turkey near Syria, Iraq and Iran since
1984. The fighting has cost tens of thousands of lives. The U.S., the
European Union and Turkey consider the PKK a terrorist organization.

Turkey has said it would not tolerate more PKK attacks, after a string
of deadly ambushes killed dozens of troops in the past months. In
October, the Parliament allowed the government to send troops into Iraq
to hit rebel bases there.

The Cabinet then authorized the military to hit rebel targets in Iraq.

[Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to
this report.]

© 2007 The Associated Press.