Turkish jets bombed separatist Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq for the second day in a row, Kurdish security officials said Sunday, although there was no immediate confirmation from the Turkish military.
Jabbar Yawer, the deputy minister for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s security forces, said the aircraft hit a remote border region 50 miles north of Irbil, Iraq, but that there were no civilian casualties because the area was deserted.
Yawer said he did not know if there were any fatalities among the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by its Kurdish initials, PKK. Turkey accuses the group of launching attacks into Turkey from remote bases in the mountains of the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
The Turkish military, which made three large cross-border attacks in the past week, had not issued a statement confirming an operation by Sunday night. On Sunday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan only repeated his assertions that the government had the right to fight the rebels as it saw fit. “We, without enmity, use our right stemming from international law,” he said, according to the semiofficial Anatolian News Agency.
Turkey had claimed it had killed hundreds of PKK rebels in air and artillery strikes on Saturday, contradicting Kurdish claims that no one had died.
Before Sunday’s attack, Massoud Barzani, the political leader of Iraqi Kurdistan, visited refugees who had fled border areas after the Turkish bombing Saturday and condemned the air strikes as “unacceptable.”
“Their goal is not only the PKK but the whole idea of an autonomous Kurdish region,” he told the families, according to the Kurdistan TV channel. “This problem is not solved militarily, and we are prepared for all peaceful solutions.”
It has proved difficult to verify the conflicting claims because the Kurdish government does not allow access to the remote areas.
On Sunday, Ryan Crocker, the American ambassador in Baghdad, backed Turkey’s right to defend itself against cross-border attacks but urged against destabilizing Iraq.