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The immediate threat of military action may have lessened, but it is still a slow-motion train wreck. If the Kurds of northern Iraq do not quash the PKK, Turkey will and Turkey will be justified. But the fact that Turkey will be justified will in no way lessen the damage to long-term Turkish or Kurdish interests. JINSA has a long history with both the Kurds of northern Iraq and with Turkey - and we were not surprised to discover that in the period of American protection for the Kurds, Turkey emerged as the primary economic and social interlocutor for...

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Turkish warplanes and helicopter gunships attacked positions of Kurdish rebels along the rugged Iraqi-Turkish border on Wednesday, the country's official Anatolia news agency reported. Several F-16 warplanes loaded with bombs took off from an air base in southeastern city of Diyarbakir, private Dogan news agency and local reporters said. Turkish artillery units had been shelling rebel positions Tuesday night in northern Iraq, a government official said on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The strikes were in retaliation for a rebel ambush on Sunday that killed 12 soldiers and...

CIZRE, Turkey - Turkish warplanes and helicopter gunships reportedly pounded Kurdish rebel positions along the Turkey-Iraq border Wednesday, broadening military operations against insurgents amid persistent fears Turkey will launch a major offensive inside Iraq. Turkish Cabinet members and military generals held a six-hour meeting in Ankara to discuss a possible operation in northern Iraq, but decided to recommend the government take economic measures first to force cooperation by Iraqis against Kurdish rebels. The state-run Anatolia news agency reported that Turkish warplanes and attack helicopters bombed mountain paths used by rebels to cross the porous border from Iraq and stage hit-and-run...

The Turkish Armed Forces have entered North Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish militants, Yeni Safak newspaper reports. According to the source, the Turkish special task force is conducting an operation to back helicopters, F16 fighters and artillery strike camps of the PKK (Kurdistan Worker Party). The troops invaded the Iraqi territory by approximately 50 km. According to the Turkish military, up to 3,500 Kurdish rebels are deployed in the area. Earlier, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that a military operation could be launched in North Iraq at any moment and Turkey would not ask for permission from the...

THE Bush Administration is considering air strikes, including cruise missiles, against the Kurdish rebel group PKK in northern Iraq. The move would be an attempt to stave off a Turkish invasion of that country to fight the rebels. President George Bush spoke with Turkish President Abdullah Gul by phone yesterday in an effort to ease the crisis. And Prime Minister John Howard says the tensions on the Turkey-Iraq border will not help the west's battle for democracy in Iraq. Mr Howard said there was some recent evidence that US forces were making headway in their battle against al-Qaeda in Iraq...

Iraq shuts down Kurdish rebel offices under threat of attack Philip Webster, Political Editor, and Tom Baldwin in Washington Times interview with Turkish Prime Minister | Transcript Iraq ordered the closure yesterday of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) offices in the country as pressure mounted on the Government of Nouri al-Maliki to clamp down on the hardline Kurdish separatists. “The PKK is a terrorist organisation and we have taken a decision to shut down their offices and not allow them to operate on Iraqi soil,” Mr al-Maliki said after talks with Ali Babacan, the Turkish Foreign Minister. “We will also...

Turkey will launch military action against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq despite frantic appeals for restraint from America and Nato, its Prime Minister has told The Times. Speaking hours before the PKK, the Kurdish Workers’ Party, killed at least 17 more Turkish soldiers yesterday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey had urged the US and Iraqi governments repeatedly to expel the separatists but they had done nothing. Turkey’s patience was running out and the country had every right to defend itself, he said. “Whatever is necessary will be done,” he declared in an interview. “We don’t have to get permission...

The Kurds have “no friends but the mountains,” or so an old saying goes. It is hard for Westerners to grasp just how isolated the Kurds feel: They are hated by almost everyone in the region, and ignored by or unknown to almost everyone else in the world. That partly explains their fanatical pro-Americanism: A friend, at last! Israelis, perhaps, can relate. Iraqi Kurds, though, are much more aggressively pro-American than Israelis. They arguably take their pro-Americanism to the point of absurdity. Fake McDonald’s restaurants with names like “MaDonal” pop up in Kurdistan nearly as fast as real McDonald’s chains...

BAGHDAD - Turkey's foreign minister rejected any cease-fire by Kurdish rebels Tuesday as he met with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad to press them to crack down on the guerrillas. Turkish forces massed on the border and tensions rose over a threatened military incursion. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, himself a Kurd, said Iraq's central government and authorities in its Kurdish autonomous region in the north would work together to deny the rebels freedom of movement, funds and representative offices. He did not elaborate. Iraqi officials have been saying that guerrillas with the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is known by...

By Bay Fang | Washington Bureau October 23, 2007 Digg Del.icio.us Facebook Fark Google Newsvine Reddit Yahoo Print Single page view Reprints Reader feedback Text size: WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is considering air strikes against the Kurdish rebel group PKK in northern Iraq in an attempt to stave off a Turkish invasion of Iraq to fight the rebels, administration officials said. President Bush spoke with Turkish President Abdullah Gul by phone Monday in an effort to ease the crisis. According to an official familiar with the conversation, Bush assured the Turkish president that the U.S. was looking seriously into...

Al Qaeda 'Re-Emerging' in Pakistan Sanctuaries The U.S. military said Tuesday it expected Al Qaeda to continue its "re-emergence" in sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal areas from where it supported attacks in Afghanistan. Sanctuary was provided to Al Qaeda and Taliban rebels after Islamabad signed a peace deal with militants in a desperate attempt to quell the unrest in its federally administered areas in September 2006, a U.S. military official said. The militants called off the deal in July this year after Pakistani security forces raided a radical mosque in Islamabad where rebels had massed. Dozens were killed in those...

LONDON (AFP) — US failure to act against Turkish Kurd rebels based in northern Iraq threatens Anakara's close ties with Washington, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned in an interview published Monday. Erdogan, who begins a two-day visit to Britain on Monday, said the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was hiding behind the United States and Iraqi governments and using US weapons against Turkish forces. "We have told (US President George W. Bush) about this issue but have not had a single positive result," he told The Times newspaper in an interview given before a PKK ambush near the...

Turkey will launch military action against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq despite frantic appeals for restraint from America and Nato, its Prime Minister has told The Times. Speaking hours before the PKK, the Kurdish Workers’ Party, killed at least 17 more Turkish soldiers yesterday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey had urged the US and Iraqi governments repeatedly to expel the separatists but they had done nothing. Turkey’s patience was running out and the country had every right to defend itself, he said. “Whatever is necessary will be done,” he declared in an interview. “We don’t have to get permission...

ANKARA (Reuters) - Kurdish guerrillas killed 17 Turkish soldiers and wounded 16 others in an ambush on Sunday, prompting crisis talks in Ankara to weigh a military strike against rebel bases in Iraq. The attack, the worst in more than a decade by rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), came four days after Turkey's parliament overwhelmingly approved a motion to allow troops to enter northern Iraq to fight guerrillas hiding there. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said after his crisis talks with Turkey's top political and security officials that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had asked for a...

12 Turkish troops killed in rebel attack By VOLKAN SARISAKAL, Associated Press Writer 12 minutes ago Kurdish rebels ambushed a military unit near Turkey's border with Iraq early Sunday, killing 12 soldiers and increasing pressure on the Turkish government to stage attacks against guerrilla camps in Iraq. Iraq's president, a Kurd, ordered Kurdish guerrillas to lay down their weapons or leave, but Turkey's deputy prime minister said words were no longer enough: "We are expecting concrete steps from them." The soldiers died when rebels blew up a bridge as a 12-vehicle military convoy was crossing it, less than three miles...

# Kurdish rebels kill at least 12 Turkish soldiers, Turkish government says # Turkish forces respond by killing 23 PKK rebels, government says # Fighting taking place inside Turkey near border with Iraq and Iran # Wedding convoy trips landmine nearby, injuring 12 Turkish civilians

Profile: PKK rebel group By Pam O'Toole BBC News PKK fighters train in northern Iraq. Photo: June 2007 The PKK wants more autonomy in south-eastern Turkey The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has been a thorn in Turkey's side for decades. The group, which has Marxist-Leninist roots, was formed in the late 1970s and launched an armed struggle against the Turkish government in 1984, calling for an independent Kurdish state within Turkey. Since then, more than 37,000 people have died. During the conflict, which reached a peak in the mid-1990s, thousands of villages were destroyed in the largely Kurdish south-east and...

Turk Warns Against House 'Genocide' Motion By SEBNEM ARSU Published: October 15, 2007 ISTANBUL, Oct. 14 — The chief of the Turkish armed forces has warned that military relations with the United States would take a negative turn if Congress approved the Armenian genocide resolution that was passed by the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week. Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, the armed forces chief, was quoted by the newspaper Milliyet on Sunday as saying that the resolution, which condemns the killings of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks beginning in 1915 as an act of genocide, has caused considerable disappointment in...

Kurds don't fear Turks By Betsy Hiel TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, October 14, 2007 QANDIL MOUNTAINS, Iraq Turkey's threat to invade northern Iraq and attack PKK guerrillas comes when U.S.-Turkish relations are at an all-time low. It further complicates already-strained U.S. plans in the region, including efforts to end sectarian violence across Iraq and to isolate Washington's regional arch-nemesis, Iran. A recent Pew opinion poll showed only 9 percent of Turks hold a positive view of the United States while 28 percent look favorably on Iran.

Turkish artillery fired seven to eight shells into a village in northern Iraq late on Saturday, witnesses in the area said.

UNCELI, Turkey (Reuters) - Kurdish separatist rebels said on Friday they were crossing back into Turkey to target politicians and police after Ankara said it was preparing to attack them in the mountains of northern Iraq. ADVERTISEMENT As regional tensions rose, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan cautioned that relations between Ankara and Washington were in danger over a U.S. congressional resolution branding as genocide massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915. Washington harbors growing concerns about the possibility of a major Turkish military incursion to crush Kurdish rebels seeking a homeland in eastern Turkey. U.S. officials fear such an action...

TUNCELI, Turkey (Reuters) - Kurdish rebels shot dead 13 Turkish soldiers on Sunday, the worst such incident in years and likely to put more pressure on the government to authorize a cross-border military strike against Kurdish bases in Iraq. The soldiers were killed after the army -- which has boosted its troops in the southeast and introduced security zones limiting access for civilians in the region -- killed a PKK suspect earlier in the day in fighting in Sirnak province

Kurdish guerillas launch clandestine war in Iran By Damien McElroy in the Qandil mountains Last Updated: 1:54am BST 10/09/2007 Kurdish guerrillas have launched a clandestine war in north-western Iran, ambushing troops as they seek Western backing to secure an ethnic homeland. Kurdish fighters in training. Iran claims that the US is secretly supporting Kurdish attacks upon its infrastructure and troops In retaliation, the Iranian army has carried out a series of counter-attacks in the mountains, which span the border with Iraq. Murat Karayilan, a Kurdish guerilla commander, told The Daily Telegraph that Teheran had originally tried to recruit the outlawed...

Sulaimaniya, Aug 28, (VOI) – Hundreds of panicky Kurdish families inhabiting border areas with neighboring Iran had to flee their homes after Iranian shelling targeted villages at the foot of Mount Qandeel in Sulaimaniya province, 364 km northeast of Baghdad. The families are now living in groups in tents near rivers and wells, waiting for the government's helping hand that is never outstretched. Although the villagers know quite well that their areas are coming under attack due to the presence of PJAK fighters, Iranian Kurds who oppose the mullahs’ regime in Iran, Khidr Bayez, 57, supports the Kurds. "The presence...

Iraq's beleaguered prime minister on Sunday took a swipe at the governments of Turkey and Iran, both countries he has visited recently, and challenged their recent artillery bombardments inside Iraq in the Kurdish-dominated northern region where both the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the anti-Iranian Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PEJAK), linked to the PKK, have found refuge. "The bombardments by Iran and Turkey are violations of Iraq's sovereignty. We will not allow these violations, but this must come through diplomatic channels. We will inform our brothers in Turkey and Iran about that through the Foreign Ministry,"...

An alleged secret Iranian war plan outlines aggressive military operations in coordination with the Turkish army to capture Kurdish land in northern Iraq to create a buffer zone, Kurdish sources close to the PKK says. The primary objective is to sabotage a possible blitz by American ground troops into Iran. The information was disclosed by a dissident Iranian military official. The Iranian pretext for the offensive into southern Kurdistan will be to root out and destroy PKK forces along the border with eastern [Iranian] Kurdistan. Iran has since last year tested the territorial integrity of Iraq and the KRG with...

Over the past week, with Iranian shells raining down on Iraqi villages in Kurdish areas along the border zone in the north, Iran’s leaders have engaged the United States in a high stakes game that has gone virtually unreported in the elite media. Iran has massed thousands of troops along its northwestern border in preparation for a ground assault against Iranian Kurdish fighters who have sought refuge in the rugged Qanbil mountains in northwestern Iraq. On Tuesday, villagers found leaflets bearing the official Islamic Republic of Iran logo, ordering them to leave the area or face the consequences. “Our enemies,...

Over the past week, with Iranian shells raining down on Iraqi villages in Kurdish areas along the border zone in the north, Iran’s leaders have engaged the United States in a high stakes game that has gone virtually unreported in the elite media. Iran has massed thousands of troops along its northwestern border in preparation for a ground assault against Iranian Kurdish fighters who have sought refuge in the rugged Qanbil mountains in northwestern Iraq.

The morass in Iraq and deepening difficulties in Afghanistan have not deterred the Bush administration from taking on a dangerous and questionable new secret operation. At a high level, U.S. officials are working with their Turkish counterparts on a joint military operation to suppress Kurdish guerrillas and capture their leaders. Through covert activity, their goal is to forestall Turkey from invading Iraq. While detailed operational plans are necessarily concealed, the broad outlines have been presented to selected members of Congress as required by law. U.S. Special Forces are to work with the Turkish Army to suppress the Kurds' guerrilla campaign....

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq - Iranian artillery shelled near Iraqi Kurd villages Thursday as Iranian troops clashed with Kurdish guerrillas making an incursion across the border, officials in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan said. It was the third day of shelling in two areas along the border in northern Iraq, said Jabbar Yawer, spokesman for the Kurdistan protection forces, or Peshmerga. Residents of the areas said the bombardment had not caused casualties but had killed farm animals and started a fire on a mountain. Iranian shelling in the Peshdar region, 60 miles northwest of Sulaimaniyah, hit areas as far as 18 miles from the...

New James Bond director Marc Forster announced plans to direct a new movie, "Land of the Roses," about PKK Islamic terrorist Ibrahim Parlak. Problem is, you won't hear a thing about his terrorist activity. While James Bond is busy fighting fictional terrorists, his director is busy whitewashing the real-life version: Inspired by the real-life experiences of Kurdish immigrant Ibrahim Parlak in post-Sept. 11 America, the story line follows a suburban mother who, with the support of her fellow outraged townspeople, attempts to exonerate a hardworking Middle Eastern father falsely imprisoned as a terrorist by Homeland Security. James Bond Director Marc...

ANKARA (AFP) - Turkey has drawn up plans for an eventual incursion into neighbouring northern Iraq to pursue Turkish Kurd rebels taking refuge there, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Friday. "We are in agreement on what should be done," Gul told CNN Turk television, referring to insistent calls by the Turkish army for a cross-border operation against the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Excerpt - TUNCELI, Turkey, June 23 (Reuters) - Two Kurdish militants rammed an oil-filled truck into a Turkish police station on Saturday in a suicide attack, army sources said, marking a sharp escalation of separatist violence. After the explosion other members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) attacked the station in the eastern province of Tunceli and the army responded with an operation supported from the air, the sources said. The two militants in the truck were killed but no further details were available on the death toll. ~ snip ~

The threat of an invasion didn't materialize, and yet the Turkish army's activities in northern Iraq Wednesday revealed that it is only waiting for the right opportunity to launch strikes against the Kurdish separatist organization PKK in northern Iraq. Emotions are running dangerously high. For several minutes every television channel in Turkey carried the same images: weeping mothers desperately throwing themselves onto flag-draped coffins, huge crowds waving flags and chanting slogans against the Kurdish separatist organization, the PKK, and officers offering their condolences to the grieving mothers. The funerals of seven young recruits killed earlier in the week in a...

A TURKEY-IRAQ WAR? ANKARA SEETHING WITH RAGE AT KURDISH TERRORIST GROUP June 4, 2007 -- TURKEY could send troops into Iraq any day now. It's massing ground forces on its southeastern border for a possible strike against the terrorist/separatist group the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Turkish special ops are likely already on the ground in Iraq. This is the last thing we - or the Iraqis - need. Preventing it must be a top priority of America, Iraq and Europe. The Kurdish area is the most stable and pro-American part of Iraq; neither Washington nor Baghdad can afford to have...

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged Turkey on Sunday against using military force against Kurdish separatist forces in northern Iraq amid rising tensions in the border region. "We would prefer that we continue to work through this problem with them to try and safeguard Turkey, and hope that there would not be a unilateral military action across the border into Iraq," Gates told a news briefing at an Asian security conference in Singapore. Troop movements on Turkey's southeastern border have prompted speculation of a possible incursion into Iraq's largely autonomous northern Kurdistan region. Last week, Turkey moved tanks near to...

American officials have agreed to turn a blind eye to the PKK presence in the northern Iraqi Kurdish Kandil Mountains provided the Kurdish militants stir up trouble inside neighboring Iran. This is behind the American reluctance to move to "finish off" the PKK in Iraq. The Bush administration has been courting the PKK and the Iranian opposition groups based in Iraq and encouraging them to launch terrorist attacks and create disturbances in Iran.

The Iranian Revolution in Iraq KOMALAH COMPOUND, NORTHERN IRAQ ? They were supposed to be social democrats, the people Patrick Lasswell and I met yesterday in a compound outside the city of Suleimaniya, the cultural capital of Northern Iraqi Kurdistan. We had it all set up. We were to meet Abu Bakr Mudarisy and his associates for lunch at 11:00 A.M. and learn what we could about the anti-government resistance a few miles away in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Our driver Yusef misunderstood and took us to the wrong place. He did drop us off where we met left-wing...

ANKARA, Turkey: Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi on Tuesday warned against a possible Turkish incursion into Iraq to fight separatist Kurdish guerrillas and promised to prevent cross-border attacks by the rebels. "We want both countries to respect the borders of each other and expect the sides to be against such a thing," al-Hashimi said upon his arrival in Ankara for a one-day visit. He was responding to a question about a possible Turkish incursion into his country to hunt down guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. Al-Hashimi reiterated promises by Iraq to prevent attacks by the rebels. "Iraq...

Turkey must act immediately to secure Kirkuk using even the most extreme measures since any delay would bring Turkey no advantages but many disadvantages, according to Scott Sullivan, a former Washington government employee. In his article "Turkey must strike immediately to take Kirkuk and Basra" posted on Petroleum World, Sullivan stated that the longer Turkey waits to take this action, the more Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani can change the facts on the ground by allowing more Kurds to resettle in the oil-rich region. Also if Turkey does not strike, Sullivan argued, the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) will strengthen...

December 3, 2006: In the United States, a federal judge has ruled that the President does not have the authority to designate certain organizations as terrorist groups. This ruling is the latest round of lawfare against the war on terror. In this case, two foreign terrorist organizations, the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elan (LTTE), were the beneficiaries of this suit. Why is this case, filed on behalf of the Humanitarian Law Project, important? After all, a number of human rights groups have still been waging lawfare, largely on behalf of al Qaeda. This suit...

A federal judge has ruled that a portion of a post-Sept. 11 executive order allowing President Bush to create a list of specially designated global terrorist groups is unconstitutionally vague. U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins, in a Nov. 21 ruling released Tuesday, struck down the provision and enjoined the government from blocking the assets of two foreign groups which were placed on the list. The ruling was praised by David Cole, a lawyer for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Constitutional Rights. "This law gave the president unfettered authority to create blacklists," he said. "It was reminiscent of the McCarthy era."...

Judge strikes down Bush on terror groups By LINDA DEUTSCH, AP Special Correspondent 41 minutes ago A federal judge struck down President Bush's authority to designate groups as terrorists, saying his post-Sept. 11 executive order was unconstitutionally vague, according to a ruling released Tuesday. The Humanitarian Law Project had challenged Bush's order, which blocked all the assets of groups or individuals he named as "specially designated global terrorists" after the 2001 terrorist attacks. "This law gave the president unfettered authority to create blacklists," said David Cole, a lawyer for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Constitutional Rights that represented the group....

MOUNT QANDIL, Iraq (AFP) - It took just a few minutes inside the offices of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the mountain village to figure out who was their leader. Ronahi Ahmed was in charge, and the men in the room immediately deferred to the stern-faced woman with long curly hair and an unexpectedly brilliant smile. Although ostensibly a member of the civilian political wing of the PKK, Ahmed still had a pistol at her belt, a reminder of her days as a guerrilla leader. In a part of the world known for the subordination of women, nowhere...

Can the PKK Renounce Violence? Terrorism Resurgent by Soner Cagaptay Middle East Quarterly Winter 2007 In 2002, it seemed as if Turkey's two-decade long struggle against the Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, PKK) had ended. It did not. Peace was ephemeral. While the PKK, on October 1, declared yet another cease-fire, it came only after a sustained period of almost daily attacks on Turkish soldiers, civilians, and foreign tourists. On August 27 and 28, for instance, the PKK bombed targets in Istanbul and the resort cities of Antalya and Marmaris, killing three people and wounding more than 100.[1] What...

BRUSSELS, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Two former senior U.S. officials suggested on Monday deploying NATO forces in northern Iraq to forestall the risk of a Turkish invasion. In a policy paper issued before a summit of the 26-nation alliance in Riga next week, Richard Holbrooke and Ronald Asmus said NATO members had an interest in doing everything possible to maintain Iraq's unity and prevent a full-scale civil war. "Already today in Turkey there are voices openly calling for an invasion of northern Iraq to deal with the constant raids into southeastern Turkey by the terrorist organisation known as the PKK,"...

ANKARA, Turkey - A Kurdish guerrilla group claimed responsibility for a weekend bomb attack that wounded 17 people in eastern Turkey, a pro-Kurdish news agency reported Monday. The armed wing of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, said on its Web site that it was behind Saturday's attack near a police guest house in the eastern city of Igdir, according to the Firat news agency. The group also claimed responsibility for another bombing Saturday that derailed a freight train in southeastern Turkey. Saturday's attacks coincided with complaints by imprisoned rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan about his prison conditions. The attacks also...

Erbil, 24 August (AKI) - Turkish airforce jets on Thursday struck in northern Iraq, bombing bases believed to be operated by the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the Cihan news agency reports. The PKK which is banned in Turkey had earlier appealed to the population in the villages in Iraqi Kurdistan, near the Turkish border, to leave the area, predicting military attacks by Turkey and Iran. The separatist group also said it had proposed some sort of truce to Ankara. Turkish military officials stated that the F-16 jets which took off during the night had inflicted serious casualties on the...

http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=13085 Turkish F-16 Jets Carry out Strikes Against PKK Targets in N. Iraq 8/24/2006 Cihan News Agency Turkish jet fighters have commenced air strikes against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PPK) bases in northern Iraq. F-16 jets carried out air strikes against targets in the Kanimasi and Snaht regions in northern Iraq. Army officials stated that the F-16 jets which took off during the night had inflicted serious casualties on the PKK. In addition to the air strikes, Turkish security forces are continuing their operations along the Iraqi border. The U.S. government is looking into allegation of Kurdish reports of...

LONDON, August 19 (IranMania) - Kurdish rebels on Friday accused Iranian forces of shelling several villages inside northern Iraq, killing two civilians and forcing many to flee the region after two days of strikes, AFP reported. "Iranian forces have since 9:00 am (0500 GMT) hit several villages near the mountainous Qandil region and killed two civilians," said Rustom Judi, a local leader from the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). He said the Iranian artillery bombarded "eight villages, and today was the second day of strikes in the same region" on the Iranian border. Judi said many villagers fled their...