Ankara: Turkey has made good on its threat to strike Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, saying it inflicted "heavy losses" on the armed separatist movement PKK with cross-border airstrikes and artillery.

The army said it used artillery and airstrikes against a group of "50 to 60 terrorists ... Inside Iraq s borders" southeast of the Turkish town of Cukurca in Hakkari province in the mountainous Turkey-Iraq border region. "If necessary, other army units will intervene in the region," it added.

A senior PKK leader denied the strikes had occurred. "There are no clashes with the Turkish army. Our area is quiet ... There are no airstrikes nor any artillery shells," he said by telephone from a rebel base near the Iraq-Turkey border. "There has been no crossing of Turkish troops into the Kurdistan region," added the official, who asked not to be named.

Contacted in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Arbil, Fuad Hussein, chief of staff for Massud Barzani, the president of Iraq s Kurdish region did not categorically confirm the strikes but said "it could be artillery shelling." He said a ground assault by Turkish forces was not expected given the "prevailing weather conditions." Jabbar Yawar, the head of peshmerga forces in northern Ira, said without elaborating that Turkish aircraft had been "trespassing northern Iraqi airspace for a week." The US military in Baghdad said it had no reports of Turkish military operations in northern Iraq.

Source : PTI