By DPA
Istanbul/Baghdad : Turkey’s military has said the US gave the go-ahead for its attacks on Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq Sunday while Iraq indicated that it formally protested the raids, reports said.
US forces in Iraq had opened the airspace for Turkish fighter planes targeting the banned Kurdish Worker’s Party, the Turkish Armed Forces Chief of General Staff Yasar Buyukanit was quoted as saying by Turkish papers Monday. Secret service had also been provided, the reports said.
The attacks on northern Iraq had been the most successful by the Turkish military against the PKK in a long time, Buyukanit said.
The Turkish military said raids had been launched in the early hours of Sunday on bases of the PKK deep inside northern Iraqi territories. These included attacks on the suspected headquarters of the underground organization.
Kurdish sources said five PKK fighters and three civilians were killed, while a total of 15 villages were bombarded. Iraq’s foreign ministry, in a statement Monday, said Turkish fighter jets had bombed Iraqi villages, killing one woman and injuring four people, making several families homeless, destroying a clinic and a school and damaging bridges.
The statement also said Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Muhammad al-Haj Hamud had Sunday called in the Turkish ambassador to Iraq and handed in his government’s protest at the air strikes on populated Iraqi villages in Qalit Daza in Sulaymanyah province.
Iraq had called on Turkey to end the military operations that, it said, affected innocent people, caused panic and could “affect the friendly ties between both peoples and their neighbouring governments”, said the statement, which was carried by the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.
US State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey told reporters in Washington that the US expected Turkey and Iraq to cooperate in the fight against the PKK.
“We want to see the PKK not be in a position to conduct attacks on anyone in Turkey and Iraq or elsewhere, and are going to continue to do what we can to work both with the government of Turkey and the government of Iraq to coordinate actions and policies,” Casey said.
The villages struck were Leothri, Surawah, and Klatokan in the Qalit Daza area, according to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry.
According to Turkish estimates, some 3,000 PKK fighters are positioned in the northern Iraqi mountains, neighbouring Turkey.
Special units of the Turkish military attacked for the first time early this month PKK rebels in northern Iraq after the parliament in Ankara had given its authorization.
Turkey, the US and the European Union consider the PKK a terrorist organization.