ARBIL, Iraq (Thomson Financial) - Turkish troops Sunday sent shells crashing across the Iraqi border into several villages in the autonomous Kurdish region, officials said, as Ankara prepared to ask MPs to approve a ground incursion.
Residents of a village near the northern Iraq border town of Zakhu fled after shells slammed into their homes and farms during a day-long bombardment that caused major damage but no casualties, Kurdistan regional government spokesman Jamal Abdullah told AFP.
'From this morning until early evening there was a Turkish attack on villagers near Zakhu,' Abdullah said. 'There were no casualties but lots of damage and many families fled to safer areas.'
An army officer had earlier told AFP on condition of anonymity that cross-border shelling in a number of areas began Saturday around 10:00 pm (1900 GMT) and carried on sporadically into Sunday. Most of the shells landed in open land, he added.
A witness said the shells hit around villages in the Al-Amadiyah area about 15 kilometres from the frontier and 50 kilometres northeast of the town of Dohuk.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that he was ready to brave international censure should his country decide to deal ruthlessly with Kurdish rebel bases in Iraq.
A government bill seeking the go-ahead to launch an incursion any time in the next year is expected to be submitted to parliament after a cabinet meeting on Monday.
A resident of the village of Kista near the Iraq-Turkey frontier said by telephone the shelling was targeting villages in the Metin mountain area 'where the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) has bases.'
A spokesman for the PKK in Iraq, Abdul Rahman al-Jadershi, confirmed the shelling but said that reports the rebel group is crossing into Turkey to launch attacks 'are not correct.'
Ankara charges the PKK has used bases in northern Iraq to launch a renewed offensive inside Turkey that saw 15 soldiers killed last week.
Turkey also claims Iraqi Kurds support the PKK with arms and explosives, which the regional government strongly denies.
The Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq has warned Turkey against making good its threat to mount a cross-border incursion.
Iraqi and Turkish officials met in Baghdad on Friday in an attempt to reduce tensions.
A terse statement from the Iraqi government gave few details of what Iraqi Defence Minister Abdel Qader Mohammed Jassim and ambassador Derya Kanbay discussed, but the meeting came after both the European Union and the United States urged dialogue.
The two men discussed 'means of developing relations between the two friendly countries in the field of combating terror and exchange of information,' the statement said.
Considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, the PKK unleashed an independence struggle in Turkey in 1984 that has killed more than 37,000 people.
Turkey and Iraq signed an accord last month to combat the PKK, but failed to agree on a clause allowing Turkish troops to engage in 'hot pursuit' against rebels fleeing into Iraqi territory, as they did regularly in the 1990s. tf.TFN-Europe_newsdesk@thomson.com afp/hjp COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Financial News Limited 2007. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Thomson Financial News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Financial News.