FIGHTING between Kurdish rebels and Turkey's army and air force in south-eastern Turkey and northern Iraq killed 15 soldiers and at least 23 insurgents, the military said yesterday.
In the deadliest battle between the enemies this year, Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said 20 soldiers were wounded in the fighting, and that the battle prompted him to cut short an official visit to Turkmenistan and return home.
"These treac
herous attacks carried out against the indivisible unity of our country will never reach their aims," said parliament speaker Köksal Toptan. "We have no doubt that they will receive the answer they deserve in the harshest way."
Friday's fighting involved a rebel attack on soldiers near a military outpost in south-eastern Turkey, and Turkish warplanes, helicopters and artillery units pounding insurgent positions in northern Iraq, said Brigidair General Metin Gura, a military spokesman.
He said the Turkish forces were reacting to Kurdish rebel movements they had detected in northern Iraq and the rebel attack near the outpost in Aktutun, Turkey, about six miles north of the Iraqi border.
Gurak's statement said most of the 15 Turkish fatalities occurred near the outpost and were the result of heavy rebel fire from northern Iraq. He did not identify the weapons used by the insurgents, but the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency's website quoted Kurdish rebels as saying they used rocket launchers and assault rifles in the attack.
Turkish forces killed at least 23 Kurdish rebels, but more may have died during the artillery and air force attacks in northern Iraq, Gurak said.
He did not say whether soldiers crossed the border into Iraq during the fighting.
In addition to the 15 soldiers killed, two were missing, Gurak said. Kurdish rebels have kidnapped Turkish soldiers in the past during similar attacks.
Friday's fighting was the deadliest battle between Kurdish rebels and Turkish forces this year.
This week, Turkey's parliament is scheduled to vote on a proposal to extend for another year a mandate giving its military authorisation for cross-border operations against Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq. The current authority, which expires on October 17, has allowed Turkish warplanes and artillery to carry out several attacks against suspected Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq, and Turkey's army to stage a week-long offensive there in February.
The military has said its cross-border offensives have destroyed several rebel hideouts, but the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) insurgents have denied that.
The Kurdish rebels, based in south-eastern Turkey and northern Iraq, have been fighting for autonomy since 1984. Abdullah Öcalan founded the party in 1974 and it adopted its name PKK in 1978 as a Marxist-Leninist insurgent group fighting for an independent Kurdish state.
The PKK took up arms against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the south-east. Nearly 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict since then.
Ocalan was sentenced to death by a Turkish court in 1999 but the sentence was reduced to life imprisonment.
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