TURKISH troops, tanks and air power pounded Kurdish positions inside northern Iraq yesterday, on the second day of a sweep through the remote mountainous region.
F-4 jets from two Turkish bases struck camps of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Iraq early yesterday, while US-made Cobra helicopters continued the assault on rebel units.
The state-run Anatolian news agency said at least 30 PKK rebels had been killed since the operation was launched before dawn on Wednesday, apparently to prevent cross-border raids by the guerrillas.
It said troops had inflicted their first casualties in fighting around what it identified as the Sarisavaklar region, across the border from the Turkish province of Sirnak. There was no word of casualties on the Turkish side.
The incursion - the biggest in two years and involving at least 10,000 troops - was carried out under a "news blackout", with journalists barred from the region and film and mobile telephones confiscated by Iraqi Kurds supporting the attack.
Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) were involved in, fierce clashes with the PKK in the Begova and Derkar areas north-east of Zakho, the main town in the area, Anatolian said.
The Turkish Defence Minister, Mr Turban Tayan, described the operation the biggest since a 35,000-man, six-week incursion in 1995 - as a "humanitarian mission to protect Iraqi Kurds from the PKK.
He said the assault was mounted at the invitation of KDP leader, Mr Massoud Barzani, whose peshmerga guerrillas control the Iraqi side of the border.
Baghdad, whose authority stops short of the predominantly Kurdish north, has protested against the incursion as a violation of international law.