Turkey Claims Air Raid Killed 150 Rebels

More than 150 Kurdish rebels were killed in a cross-border air raid by Turkish military into northern Iraq earlier this week, according to Turkey's military.

Turkish warplanes successfully hit all their intended targets in a three-hour air operation on Mount Qandil in Iraq, the military said in a written statement Saturday. The air raid ended early Friday, the military said.

It had earlier reported that its warplanes bombed havens of the Kurdish rebel group PKK deep inside Iraq but had not given any figures for rebel casualties.

"According to initial assessments, more than 150 terrorists were rendered inefficient and the operation led to panic among the members of the terrorist organization," the statement said.

The military generally refers to killed rebels by saying they have been "rendered inefficient" — a euphemism designed to distance Turkish soldiers from the brutality of killing.

On Friday, the military had released footage of the raid. It said 43 rebel targets, including 29 shelters, were attacked.

Then, the military said only that "a large number" of rebels had been killed. That was disputed by a rebel spokesman, who said no rebels had been killed or injured.

An official from Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party said villagers told him four rebels were killed in the operation. The official declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Turkey, like the United States and the European Union, lists the PKK, the Kurdish acronym for Kurdistan Workers' Party, as a terrorist organization.

The Kurdish party took up arms in 1984 in an effort to win self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast. The fighting has killed tens of thousands of people in the years since.

The group maintains bases in the north of neighboring Iraq, which it uses as a launch pad for attacks against targets inside Turkey.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party leadership is believed to be hiding in the Qandil region -about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Turkish border.

The Turkish military has launched several air assaults on Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq in recent months. In February, it staged a major ground offensive that lasted eight days. Since then, clashes between rebels and Turkish troops have erupted along Turkey's border with Iraq.

Until the most recent air raid, the military had not announced an operation that penetrated into Iraq as far as Mt. Qandil.