ANKARA, Turkey, Dec. 16, 2007
Turkish Warplanes Strike Northern Iraq
Turkey's Conflict With Kurdish Separatists Threatens Relatively Stable Section Of Iraq
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Turkish soldiers patrol in Sirnak province, on the Turkish-Iraqi border, southeastern Turkey, Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2007. (AP Photo/Ibrahim Usta)
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Interactive The Kurds And Northern Iraq Learn about the Kurdish people and their leaders, key cities in Northern Iraq and the potential for conflict with Turkey.
In the nighttime offensive, the fighter jets hit rebel positions close to the border with Turkey and in the Qandil mountains, which straddle the Iraq-Iran border, the Turkish military said in a statement posted on its Web site. It said the operation was directed against the rebels and not against the local population.
As many as 50 fighter jets were involved in the airstrikes, private NTV television and other media reported. Turkey has recently attacked the area with ground-based artillery and helicopters and there have been some unconfirmed reports of airstrikes by warplanes.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan lauded Sunday's operation and suggested Turkey could stage more attacks on Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, hide-outs in northern Iraq.
"This operation, which was carried out under night conditions, was a success," Erdogan said Sunday. "Our struggle (against the PKK) will continue inside and outside Turkey with the same determination."
The pro-Kurdish news agency Firat, citing the PKK, said two civilians and five PKK rebels were killed in the raids. The airstrikes destroyed two schools and a hospital, it said in separate reports, adding that the hospital had been vacated in anticipation of a Turkish attack.
The Kurdish rebels also said they responded to Turkish raids with anti-aircraft artillery units, Firat reported.
Turkey has massed tens of thousands of troops along its border with northern Iraq in response to a series of attacks by the PKK rebels. In October, parliament voted in favor of authorizing the government to order a cross-border operation against the group, which seeks autonomy for the Kurdish minority in southeastern Turkey.
The United States and Iraq have, however, called on Turkey to avoid a major operation, fearing such an offensive could disrupt one of the most tranquil regions in Iraq.
Harsh winter conditions in the rugged terrain of northern Iraq reduce the possibility of a large-scale ground offensive, making more airstrikes against the PKK likelier than attacks using tanks or helicopters. Limited and precise air raids are also less likely to hurt Turkey's alliance with the U.S. and Europe or to affect global oil prices than a protracted land battle.
Turkish news reports said a PKK command center in Qandil was hit.
The mountain is a base for the PKK's leadership council and the group has a network of camps around the mountain. But news reports in the past weeks have suggested that PKK fighters may have dispersed from camps in northern Iraq, worried about a possible attack from Turkey.
Abdullah Ibrahim, a senior official in the Iraqi administrative center of Sangasar, said Turkish warplanes bombarded 10 Kurdish villages, killing one woman and injuring two others. He acknowledged that there were Kurdish rebel bases in the area, but said they were far from the villages that were hit.
"The villagers are now scared and are hiding in nearby caves. They lost all their properties," Ibrahim said.
Villages are scattered in the Qandil mountains, some as far as an hour's drive apart over steep roads and paths.
Jamal Abdullah, a spokesman for the regional government of Iraqi Kurdistan, told AP Television News: "We call on the Turkish army to differentiate between the PKK and the ordinary people. We don't want the conflict between the Turkish troops and the PKK to turn into a conflict between the Turkish forces and the people of Kurdistan."
The attack came a month after the United States promised to share intelligence with Turkey about the PKK.
Turkish forces have periodically shelled across the Iraqi border, and have sometimes carried out "hot pursuits" — limited raids on the Iraqi side that sometimes last only a few hours.
The military said the airstrikes began at 1 a.m., with all planes returning to their bases safely by around 4:15 a.m. The army then continued firing on the targets with long-range weapons, the military said.
The PKK has been fighting for autonomy in the predominantly Kurdish southeast for more than two decades. There has been intense public pressure on the government to attack rebel bases across the border as rebel attacks have increased in recent months.
© MMVII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Thanks for additional facts!
Very good points.
Looks to me like all you have on your side is a ''house'' sized EGO!
Posted by USAyesterday at 02:45 PM
You left out:
Under Hussein ... women had the right to own their own property.
Under Hussein ... women had the right to seek marriage and divorce ON THEIR OWN TERMS, i.e. without dependence on the agreement of the men of their families.
Under Hussein ... women were able to go to markets safely without escorts.
Under Hussein ... women were able to receive college educations.
Under Hussein ... women were able to be employed outside the home, including in technical & managerial capacities.
Under Hussein ... women held executive positions in the government.
In short, as nasty, brutish, corrupt, & unprincipled a figure as Saddam Hussein was, under his tyrannical government:
WOMEN, fully MORE than HALF of ALL Iraqis, had FAR GREATER RIGHTS than under the Corrupt Religious Theocracy set up by the Bush Administration in Iraq.
Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a secular, westernized country, although one under the rule of a brutal dictator with a lengthy history as an ALLY of the U.S. Government in the region.
Things are "better now"?
Your Tax Dollars at work. :-)
When will there ever be a big news story about how many MORE Iraqis have died since the U.S. invasion compared to the time period when Saddam Hussein was in power?
When will there ever be any comparisons between Saddam Hussein''s regime to the current banana republic Iraq currently has, among the main stream news media?
All of these comparisons would be legitimate as they are fact that Iraq was BETTER OFF under Saddam Hussein than it is today.
No, Saddam was not by any means, a "good guy". But if you had to pick between the "lesser of two evils", Saddam or U.S. Occupational government...
...Saddam would be the choice!
Greed makes for strange bedfellows!
Posted by neoconRcrazy at 09:49 AM : Dec 16, 2007
Didn''t Haliburton lose two containers full of weapons and ammo in the Kurdish controlled, northern area of Iraq? I wonder what''s going to happen when the Turks capture some of these rebels with American weapons and ammo in their possession, and being used against Turkish troops.
Posted by parakeeto
easy- because bushit supports them and arms them - without kurdish (pkk) support in nothern iraq, we''d lose control of that oil producing part of the country.
Greed makes for strange bedfellows!
Regards,
- by asmauzum December 16, 2007 10:23 AM EST
- How terrible it must be to face us; the sons of the wolf and the bear! Even now fear works in the bowels of our foes. Kill them all! Kill the Terorists of northern Iraq!
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