Turkish artillery shells Kurdish border villages - report

Oct 14, 2007, 9:26 GMT

Baghdad - Turkish forces utilising heavy artillery shelled border villages in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, witnesses told local media on Sunday.

No human losses were however reported in the bombardment, which took place overnight close to the Turkish-Iraqi border in the Nasdour area, part of the mountainous Matin region, according to witnesses cited by independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

Tensions between the Turkish government and that of the autonomous region of Kurdistan have risen lately, with Ankara warning of a possible incursion into the northern Iraqi territories following an ambush on 13 Turkish commandos and two soldiers in Turkey by members of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) rebel group.

Turkey indicated last week that it might launch cross-border raids to destroy PKK camps. Kurdish authorities however slammed the caveat and with it a security agreement that Baghdad's central government sealed last month with Ankara.

Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman on Saturday hit out at Ankara and urged Baghdad to cancel the security agreement.

Othman said the Kurdistani Alliance, which has 53 seats in Iraq's Council of Representatives, will request talks with Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani immediately after the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr to discuss the security agreement he signed with the Turkish side.

But shortly after Othman's statements were made, Interior Ministry spokesman Abdel-Karim Khalaf said that Baghdad's central government 'is alone responsible for signing foreign agreements,' without the need to consult with regional administrations - an apparent reference to the Kurdish government.

'The centralized government is solely responsible for protecting the international Iraqi borders,' Khalaf told VOI. 'The regional government is part of the state, and so they should not be concerned with foreign pacts.'

On September 28, Baghdad and Ankara sealed a security agreement under which Iraq committed to cooperating with Turkish authorities in hunting down PKK rebels in the north.

There had been pressure for occasional incursions to be an official part of the deal, but with details not disclosed, reports concerning this point were contradictory.

Some reports said the Iraqi side had agreed to cooperate but refused to grant an absolute right to Turkish troops to cross the border in pursuit of Kurdish rebels.

However, other accounts insisted that the agreement gave Turkey a right to chase the rebels inside Iraq - amid strong denials from the Iraqi government. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabagh said that Iraq would never allow Turkish troops to seep into Iraqi territories.

Media reports on Saturday however said that Turkey was already massing forces along the borders near Iraq.

Earlier, Kurdish government leader Qader Aziz said that 'any Turkish attacks will be met with wide resistance from the (Kurdish) Peshmerga and the people.'

But on Saturday, Othman ruled out a unilateral Kurdish reaction to any Turkish incursion, saying that any response would be coordinated with the central government as well as the US forces in Iraq.

The PKK meanwhile said Saturday evening that they will not leave the Kurdish region, and claimed that their militants do not launch any military strikes from the northern region.

'We have militants in Turkey who carry out the attacks. This is not new to Turks,' Abdel-Rahman Chaderchi, who is in charge of the PKK's foreign relations, told VOI.

Chaderchi said that Turkey's allegations about the launch of a military offensive from inside Iraq are a 'pretext' to erode Iraqi Kurds' rights in the region.

More than 32,000 people have been killed since the early 1980s when the PKK launched its fight for independence or autonomy for the mainly Kurdish-populated Turkish south-east.

The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by both the US and the European Union. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani had called on the PKK fighters to either leave the Kurdish lands in northern Iraq, or denounce violence and lay down their arms.