World

Turks Hit Abandoned Iraqi Villages

November 13, 2007 / 7:02 AM EST / CBS/AP

Turkish helicopter gunships attacked abandoned villages inside Iraq on Tuesday, Iraqi officials said, the first such air strike since border tensions have escalated in recent months.

It also was the first major Turkish action against Kurdish rebels since Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met President Bush in Washington earlier this month.

Col. Hussein Tamir, an Iraqi Army officer who supervises border guards, said the air strikes occurred before dawn on abandoned villages near Zakhu, an Iraqi Kurdish town near the border with Turkey. There were no casualties, he said.

A spokesman for the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, corroborated Tamir's account. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.

The United States and Iraq have pressured Turkey to avoid a large-scale attack on PKK bases in northern Iraq, fearing such an operation would destabilize what has been the calmest region in the country.

U.S. authorities have agreed, however, to share intelligence about positions of Kurdish rebels with Turkey, possibly enabling the Turkish military to carry out limited assaults.

"The United States has declared the PKK as the common enemy. The struggle against this enemy will be maintained until it is eliminated," Erdogan told lawmakers in Parliament Tuesday.

Tens of thousands of Turkish troops have massed in the country's southeast ahead of a possible operation in Iraq. A series of hit-and-run attacks by PKK rebels has left nearly 50 dead, primarily Turkish soldiers, since late September.

Kurds are a major ethnic group straddling four Middle Eastern countries - Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria - totaling about 20 million people. Most live in Turkey, primarily in the southeast, where the PKK has been fighting for autonomy since 1984 in a conflict that has killed nearly 40,000 people.

Meanwhile, a key ally of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called Tuesday for Iraq's parliament to be dissolved and new elections held immediately.

Bahaa al-Araji, a lawmaker from al-Sadr's 30-member bloc, told reporters in Baghdad that the parliament has "become a burden on the Iraqi people rather than an institution to solve their problems and offer services."

"The parliament has become a very weak institution because of the way the elections took place, especially in Anbar and Mosul and some other southern provinces. I call for revising the election law," al-Araji said.

He said he was expressing his own views, and not speaking for his parliamentary bloc.

The next parliamentary elections are currently scheduled for 2009.

Earlier this year, al-Sadr's followers pulled out of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Cabinet, to protest the Iraqi leader's reluctance to call for a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq. The Sadrists also withdrew from the legislature's largest Shiite political grouping, the United Iraqi Alliance, but retained their seats in parliament.

Bahaa al-Araji is a prominent member of al-Sadr's bloc, and is also known for a militia he keeps in northwest Baghdad. Similar to al-Sadr's larger and better-known Mahdi Army, al-Araji's group is accused of involvement in attacks on U.S. forces and the forced removal of Sunnis from neighborhoods in western Baghdad.

In other developments:

Police said at least nine Iraqis were killed Tuesday, including a policeman and his 13-year-old son gunned down in northern Iraq. Capt. Mohammed Jamil, a Kurd, was driving his family through their ethnically mixed hometown of Kirkuk, when a sedan pulled up alongside him, according to Col. Sardar Moufri, one of Jamil's colleagues. Four men riding in the sedan showered Jamil's car with bullets, killing him and his son, Moufri said. Jamil's wife was injured in the attack, he said.

Another senior Iraqi police officer survived an attack on his convoy in another area on the west side of Kirkuk, Moufri said. A roadside bomb exploded next to Brig. Sarhad Qadir's car, injuring three of his guards, Moufri said. The officer escaped unharmed. Kirkuk lies about 180 miles north of Baghdad.

Four Iraqi soldiers died when a roadside bomb went off next to their patrol in Baqouba, police said. Two others were wounded in the blast, they said. Baqouba is the capital of Diyala province, and lies 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

In a Sunni area south of Baghdad, two civilians were killed and two others wounded when another roadside bomb exploded next to their car, police added. Farther south in Hillah, about 60 miles south of the capital, another drive-by shooting killed an Iraqi construction worker who was on contract with the U.S. military, police said. U.S. officials had no immediate comment on the incident.