SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (AFP) — Turkish artillery and warplanes opened fire on suspected Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq on Thursday, Kurdish and rebel officials said.
There were no reports of casualties.
Turkish artillery bombed the village of Bassiam, in the Khawarkurk region of Arbil province at 11 am (0800 GMT), said General Jabar Yaour, a spokesman for the Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq.
A spokesman for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Ahmed Banz, said Turkish artillery opened fire against the Qalirach area, north of Arbil and near the border with Turkey.
Yaour said around the time of the barrage PKK fighters and Turkish soldiers exchanged fire near the border village of Basaban, but denied reports that the fighting took place inside northern Iraq.
In Ankara, the Turkish military issued a similar denial, saying media reports of an incursion by Turkish troops "were disseminated deliberately to mislead public opinion."
Two and a half hours later Turkish warplanes carried out air strikes in Arbil province, the sixth Turkish air raid on PKK targets in northern Iraq since December 16, Yaour said.
The situation grew tense at sundown when Kurdish troops prevented Turkish tanks from leaving Bambarneh, one of four Turkish military bases inside Iraq, Fuad Hussein, the director of the office of the Kurdish presidency, told AFP.
Peshmerga commanders invited the Turkish military to set up bases in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region a decade ago to help with the aftermath of spasms of internecine fighting among Iraqi Kurds throughout the 1990s.
The Turks never left.
Hussein also said that Turkish artillery shelled targets in the village of Zab Afachin, but there were no reported casualties.
The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and Washington, has waged a bloody campaign for self-rule in southeast Turkey since 1984. The conflict has claimed more than 37,000 lives.
Ankara says an estimated 4,000 PKK militants take refuge in camps in the mountains of northern Iraq, which they use as a springboard for attacks inside Turkey.
The latest strikes follow a February 13 visit to Ankara by General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, to discuss joint military efforts to curb the rebels.
Washington has been supplying its NATO ally Turkey with intelligence on PKK movements in northern Iraq.
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