Turkey Attacks Kurdish PKK Militants Inside Iraq (Update1)

[link to www.bloomberg.com]

By Mark Bentley and Ali Berat Meric

Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Turkey bombed units of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, in northern Iraq and sent troops across the border in pursuit of the militants, a lawmaker of Turkey's governing party said today.

Turkish military jets and artillery pounded rebel positions inside the Kurdish-controlled region intermittently, said the lawmaker, who attended a briefing on the hostilities by government spokesman Cemil Cicek late yesterday in Ankara.

The army sent troops across the border with Iraq to hunt down PKK militants after 12 Turkish soldiers were killed by the group on Oct. 21 in Turkey, the official said. They later returned to the Turkish side of the border, he added.

Turkey's parliament on Oct. 17 passed a resolution authorizing the government to send troops into northern Iraq to attack PKK bases there. The U.S. opposes such action on concern it would destabilize the calmest part of Iraq.

Turkey's main index of stocks fell 1.4 percent to 54,953.21 at 10:40 a.m. in Istanbul. The lira declined 0.3 percent to 1.218. Shares and the lira both rose yesterday on hopes for a diplomatic solution to the conflict. Crude oil rebounded, rising as much as 15 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $83 a barrel on London's ICE Futures Europe exchange.

Turkey, with the second-largest army in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, sent troops into northern Iraq in pursuit of PKK militants several times in the decade before the U.S.-led war to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003. It has halted such assaults since the U.S.-led invasion, instead attacking PKK units as they have entered Turkey.

The president of Iraq's northern Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani, urged the PKK to end its more than two-decade armed struggle against Turkey. Barzani said his government didn't accept the use of Iraqi territory, including Iraqi Kurdistan, as a base to threaten the security of neighbors, an e-mailed statement by Barzani's office said.

The PKK, designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union, has fought the Turkish military at the cost of almost 40,000 lives, most of them Kurdish.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Bentley in Ankara, Turkey on at [email protected] .
Last Updated: October 24, 2007 04:02 EDT