ANKARA: Turkish soldiers, air force bombers and helicopter gunships reportedly launched an incursion into Iraq on Wednesday, hours after Kurdish rebels killed 26 soldiers and wounded 22 others in multiple attacks along the border.
Turkish authorities did not immediately confirm the incursion but the chief of the military as well as interior and defense ministers rushed to the border area and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan canceled a visit to Kazakhstan.
NTV television, without citing sources, said Turkish troops had gone some 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) into Iraq and helicopters were ferrying commandos across the border.
The incursion for now appears to be limited in scope. Turkey last staged a major ground offensive against Iraq in early 2008.
It came hours after the rebels, who are fighting for autonomy in Turkey’s southeast, staged simultaneous attacks on military outposts and police stations near the border towns of Cukurca and Yuksekova early Wednesday.
The attacks left 26 soldiers dead and 22 others wounded, the Interior Ministry said. It was the deadliest Kurdish rebel attack since 1992, according to a tally by NTV television.
Kurdish rebel group the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, said clashes were taking place in two separate areas close to the mountainous Iraqi-Turkish border.
"We have been clashing with the Turkish forces in two areas since around 3 a.m. today," Dostdar Hamo, a spokesman for the rebel group in northern Iraq, told The Associated Press by telephone.
Turkey asked Iraq last week to move against rebel bases in northern Iraq, saying "its "patience is running out" in the face of rebel attacks directed at Turkey from Iraqi soil.
"No one should forget that those who make us suffer this pain will be made to suffer even stronger," President Abdullah Gul told reporters Wednesday. "They will see that the vengeance for these attacks will be immense and many times stronger."
A pro-Kurdish party, who is accused by authorities of links to the Kurdish rebel group, called on both the government and the rebels to end the fighting.
"Turkey’s most urgent need is peace," the Peace and Democracy Party said. "We call on both the government and the PKK to immediately halt the war, without losing a second."
Dogan news agency said around 200 Kurdish rebels were believed to have participated in the attacks Wednesday.
Turkish warplanes and artillery units, positioned just inside Turkey, struck at the Kurdish rebel bases across the border in response, NTV said.
The rebels have lately intensified their attacks in the country’s Kurdish-dominated southeast, killing dozens of members of the country’s security force and at least 18 civilians since mid-July.
On Tuesday, a roadside bomb blast killed five policemen and three civilians, including a 4-year-old girl. Wednesday’s attack sparked public outrage. A group of angry Turkish veterans of the 27-year-old Kurdish conflict attempted to storm the office of the prime minister, shouting "martyrs never die!".
The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984 as Kurdish politicians pushed for greater cultural and political rights for Kurds, who make up around 20 percent of Turkey’s 74 million people, such as the right to education in the mother tongue — a demand that the Turkish government fears could deepen the ethnic divide in the country.
The government has taken steps toward wider Kurdish-language education by allowing Kurdish-language institutes and private Kurdish courses as well as Kurdish television broadcasts. But it won’t permit lower-level education in Kurdish.
The European Union, which Turkey is striving to join, has pushed the Turkish government to grant more rights to the Kurds. But EU countries also have urged Kurdish lawmakers to distance themselves from the PKK, which is considered a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union.
"As a friend and ally, the United States will continue to stand with the people and government of Turkey in their fight against the PKK, which the United States has officially designated as a terrorist organization," said Francis Ricciardone, the US Ambassador to Turkey in a statement on Wednesday. "No political cause, and no religion, can justify terrorism."
The US currently shares drone surveillance data with Turkey to aid its fight against Kurdish rebels and it is engaged in talks with Turkey for possible deployment of Predator drones on Turkish soil after the US leaves Iraq, according to the Turkish government.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen also condemned the latest Kurdish rebel violence.
"On behalf of NATO, I condemn in the strongest possible terms the recent attacks in southeastern Turkey, which killed and injured several Turkish soldiers, policemen and civilians, including a child," Rasmussen said in a statement. –Associated Press writer Yahya Barzanji in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq, contributed.
