Turkey strikes in northern Iraq

Published 9:38 pm Tuesday, December 18, 2007

BAGHDAD — Turkey sent hundreds of troops across the border into the frigid mountains of northern Iraq on Tuesday, claiming it inflicted heavy losses on Turkish Kurd rebels in the small-scale incursion and from air strikes two days earlier.

Kurdish officials said late Tuesday that the Turkish ground troops had withdrawn, but the Turkish military, however, did not confirm a pullout.

Tuesday’s raid was the first confirmed Turkish ground operation targeting rebel bases inside Iraq since the U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, though about 1,200 Turkish military monitors have operated in northern Iraq since 1996 with permission from local authorities.

However, the incursion did not represent a large-scale push into the semiautonomous Kurdistan region that some feared could destabilize this relatively calm part of Iraq.

In November, the Turkish military reportedly massed 100,000 troops along the border, and there are fears that a major Turkish offensive could cause civilian casualties and lead to conflict with the peshmerga, the fierce Kurdish regional militia.

The rebels, known as the Kurdistan People’s Party, or PKK, have battled for autonomy for southeastern Turkey for more than two decades and use strongholds in northern Iraq for cross-border strikes. Turkey has said it can no longer tolerate the attacks on its troops, and in October Turkey’s Parliament authorized the country’s military to strike back at the rebels inside Iraq.

In its statement, the Turkish military said ground forces based close to the border crossed “a few kilometers” into northern Iraq on Tuesday after spotting a group of rebels trying to infiltrate into Turkey overnight.

“A heavy blow was inflicted on the group with the land forces stationed in the area,” it said.

The military said it was not able to give the number of rebels who may have been killed during Sunday’s airstrikes on PKK targets, but maintained that “many facilities harboring the PKK were hit.”

But U.S. military commanders in Iraq didn’t know Turkey was sending warplanes to bomb in northern Iraq on Sunday until the planes had already crossed the border, said defense and diplomatic officials, who were angered about being left in the dark.

Americans have been providing Turkey with intelligence to go after Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. And a “coordination center” has been set up in Ankara so Turks, Iraqis and Americans can share information, two officials said Tuesday.

The trigger came late Saturday, retired Maj. Gen. Armagan Kuloglu said, when the United States provided intelligence on a suspected guerrilla site in northern Iraq. Kuloglu said the 31/2-hour air operation that followed did major damage to PKK bases.

One senior State Department official said Turkey informed the United States of the airstrikes through military channels in Ankara but not until after the first wave of planes was already in the air. “They said it was hot pursuit,” the official said. “But our message to them was that they need to make sure we’re aware of what they’re doing and that we find out about it before the guns start firing.”

Iraqi leaders complained Monday that Turkey hadn’t coordinated with Baghdad before sending bombers to strike PKK targets.

It was left to the Americans to inform Iraqi government officials of Sunday’s incursion, one U.S. official said.

Iraqi officials condemned the offensive, although they said they recognized that the PKK was a threat.