Kurdish
Rebels Attack
Turkish Military Outpost
By Selcan Hacaoglu
05 June 2007
Associated Press
Kurdish
rebels fired rockets and grenades at a Turkish military outpost yesterday,
killing 7 soldiers in a bold attack that heightened tension at a time
when Ankara has threatened military action against Kurdish rebels in
northern Iraq.
The army sent helicopter
gunships and reinforcements to Tunceli province in southeastern Turkey
after guerrillas rammed a vehicle into the military post and opened
fire with automatic weapons and rockets, local media reported.
Soldiers returned fire, killing
the vehicle driver, the military said.
The attack came as Foreign
Minister Abdullah Gul told European Union officials visiting Ankara
that "we have every right to take measures against terrorist activities
directed at us from northern Iraq."
Turkey's political and military
leaders have been debating whether to stage an incursion into northern
Iraq to try to root out Kurdish rebel bases there.
However, German Foreign Minister
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose country holds the EU presidency, said
he "did not get the impression that Turkey would stage an incursion."
On Monday, a pro-Kurdish
news agency reported that Turkish troops shelled a border area in northern
Iraq for a second day in an attack on Kurdish rebels based there.
Abdul-Rahman al-Chadarchi,
a spokesman for the Kurdish rebel group PKK, told The Associated Press
by telephone that there had been artillery shelling from Turkey into
Iraqi territory at dawn, and that there had been simultaneous shelling
from the Turkish and Iranian sides on Sunday night.
"There were no casualties.
Most of the shells landed in empty areas, valleys and farms. Turkish
helicopters are conducting surveillance flights over Iraqi border lands,"
al-Chadarchi said.
The report could not immediately
be confirmed.
The leader of the autonomous
Kurdish region in northern Iraq, Massoud Barzani, confirmed shelling
by Turkish troops on Kurdish areas early Sunday but said there was no
Turkish incursion.
On Monday, the Belgium-based
Firat news agency, citing Iraqi Kurdish sources, said Turkish artillery
again targeted an area close to the border town of Zakho. On Sunday,
the agency said the troops shelled the Hakurk area, further east.
Turkish authorities, who
have called the Firat agency a mouthpiece of the main Kurdish rebel
group, the PKK, were not immediately available to comment.
Kurdish guerrillas have long
had camps in the Hakurk area, 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the Turkish
border.
Turkish troops have occasionally
launched brief raids in pursuit of guerrillas in northern Iraq, and
have sometimes shelled suspected rebel positions across the border.
Turkish authorities rarely acknowledge such military operations, which
were more frequent before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Turkey has been building
up its military forces on the Iraqi border in recent weeks, amid debate
over whether to launch a cross border offensive to attack separatist
rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, known by its Kurdish acronym,
PKK. The rebels stage raids in southeast Turkey after crossing over
from hide-outs in Iraq and have escalated bomb attacks in the west of
the country.
Police on Monday arrested
a suspected PKK rebel who allegedly staged last month's market bombing
in the Aegean port city of Izmir that killed one person and injured
15 others.
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