KurdistanObserver.com

Turkey Pressures Iraqi Kurds

ANKARA, Turkey, June 2 (UPI) -- Turkey's military remains concerned about Kurdish insurgent activity in neighboring Iraq.

On Thursday the Turkish military shelled Iraq's Kurdistan region. The artillery barrage wounded a shepherd and killed seven of his flock.

The barrage came a day after a group of Kurdish and American officials, including a U.S. general, inspected Iraqi Kurdistan for evidence of purported illegal cross-border Turkish military operations.

Adnkronos International news agency reported June 1 that Kurdish sources in Zakho, near the Iraq-Turkey border, said the Kurdish-U.S. team inspected the Afakawiz border region, which Iraqi Kurds charge that Turkey repeatedly shells.

Turkey asserts that Iraqi Kurds covertly allow the separatist Kurdish Worker Party to base themselves there.

The Kurdish Worker Party (PKK) has been fighting Turkey for more than two decades in its struggle to establish a separatist Kurdish state. The PKK is classified as a terrorist group in many countries.