Sunday, June 20, 2010
Associated Press
ANKARA, Turkey
Turkish warplanes launched air raids at suspected Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq on Saturday after a rebel attack on a military outpost in Turkey touched off clashes in which nine soldiers and 12 rebel fighters died, Turkey’s military and reports said.
Two other soldiers were killed in a land-mine explosion while chasing the rebels, the state-run Anatolia new agency reported, raising the overall death toll in Saturday’s violence to 23.
Special forces were immediately sent to reinforce the border area where the clashes occurred, and Turkish warplanes bombed detected Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq the military said, without providing any further details.
At least 14 other soldiers were wounded in the fighting.
Kurdish rebels have dramatically stepped up attacks in Turkey in recent months, threatening a government attempt to end one of the world’s longest guerrilla wars. The military said Friday more than 40 soldiers had been killed since March — including six who died in a rocket attack on a vehicle near a naval base in southern Turkey — and warned it anticipated more attacks.
Turkey’s military has responded by sending warplanes across the border for raids on suspected rebel bases while elite commandos crossed the border in pursuit of the rebels in a daylong incursion last week.
The rebels belonging to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, have used northern Iraq as a springboard to stage hit-and-run attacks on Turkish targets in their decades-long campaign for autonomy in Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast. The Turkish military says about 4,000 rebels are based just across the border in Iraq and that about 2,500 operate inside Turkey.
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