By Xinhua
Mosul, Iraq : Turkish artillery pounded Iraqi areas near the border in Duhuk province on Friday morning without causing casualties, said a source from the Kurdish border guards.
“The Turkish artillery shelled the villages of Shiefa and Zally, about three kilometers away from the Iraqi-Turkish border at about 7:00 a.m. (0400 GMT),” the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
The two-hour bombing caused no casualties as the villages were deserted, the source said.
The Turkish military has recently launched several cross-border attacks to fight against separatists of the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), which use the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq as a launch pad for attacks against Turkey.
The PKK, listed by the United States and Turkey as a terrorist group, took up arms against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the southeast. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the over-two-decade conflict.