Turkey denies launching major raid into Iraq
Turkey denied that it had launched a major incursion Wednesday into northern Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels, but a military source said troops had conducted a limited raid across the border.
The Turkish military source did not say how many troops were involved. “This cannot be called a cross-border operation; it is a limited operation,” he said.
The source said it was not unusual for troops to make “hot pursuit” raids into Iraq, where an estimated 4,000 rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, are said to be hiding.
In Washington, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Perry L. Wiggins of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told a news conference: “We have no indications ... that the Turks have conducted a cross-border operation into Iraq.”
Jabar Yawir, deputy minister for peshmerga affairs in Iraq’s semiautonomous region of Kurdistan, said: “This afternoon, the 10 Turkish helicopters landed in a village in Mazouri, which is ... [two miles] inside the Iraqi border. They landed with around 150 Turkish special forces.
“After two hours they left, and there were no confrontations with the PKK,” he added.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said there was no evidence of a military incursion.
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