Turkish warplanes launched a series of cross-border air raids against suspected Kurdish separatist fighters in northern Iraq on Thursday, Turkey's semi-official Anatolian News Agency reported.
A Turkish military source told CNN Turk, CNN's sister network, that the military scrambled jets to carry out the attack after a group of suspected fighters were detected on Iraqi territory, approaching Turkey's mountainous border with Iraq.
. . . Meanwhile, the Firat News Agency, widely believed to be a media arm of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, announced on its website that Turkish warplanes bombed three mountainous regions in northern Iraq on Thursday afternoon.
The Turkish security forces have been battling PKK guerrilla fighters in the predominantly Kurdish region of southeastern Turkey for more than 25 years. More than 30,000 people, mostly ethnic Kurds, have been killed in the conflict.
. . . Turkey has long pressured the Iraqi government to do more to rein in Kurdish separatists that operate in the border area.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/05/20/turkey.iraq/index.html
Of course, this is the same Turkey which organized the Gaza "peace flotilla", supports Hamas and condemned Israel's military response.
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