Kurdish Rebels Attack Turkish Military
Outpost, 7 Soldiers Killed
ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 4, 2007
ANKARA, Turkey – Kurdish rebels fired rockets and grenades at a Turkish military
outpost Monday, killing seven soldiers in an attack that heightened tension at a
time when Ankara has threatened military action against the rebels in northern
Iraq.
The army sent helicopter gunships and reinforcements to Tunceli province in
southeastern Turkey (Northern Kurdistan) 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 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.
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.”
A pro-Kurdish news agency reported Monday 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, farther 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, nine miles from the
Turkish border.
Turkey has been building up its military forces on the Iraqi border (Southern
Kurdistan) 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 arrested a suspected PKK rebel who allegedly staged last month's market
bombing in the Aegean port of Izmir that killed one person and injured 15
others.
