Turk Troops Join Offensive Against Kurds

Ground troops joined Turkey’s air-and-land offensive Saturday against the Kurds in northern Iraq, a campaign that officials here say is hitting Kurdish rebel bases but which Iraqi groups say is causing bloodshed in innocent villages.

“I know (they have gone into Iraq). If the government wants to, they can press on,” Dogan Gures, chief of the Turkish general staff, told reporters when asked about reports of an attack by 3,000 Turkish soldiers.

Gures said there were heavy casualties among the rebel guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who have fought a campaign since 1984 in Turkey aiming for an independent Kurdish state.

The hard-bitten, Marxist PKK of Turkey is usually at odds with most Kurdish groups in Iraq, which favor only local autonomy for the Middle East’s 25 million Kurds wherever they are--Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria or Soviet Transcaucasia.

But two days of Turkish air raids on northern Iraq brought a furious reaction from Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the main and generally most moderate faction in the Iraqi Kurdistan Front.

“We cannot remain idle watching these savage massacres,” Barzani said in a message relayed to Turkey by satellite telephone. “We warn the Turkish government from continuing this aggression against Kurdistan and pledge we shall react strongly against Turkish forces.”

Barzani’s spokesman in Ankara, Siamand Banaa, said that planes attacked Kurdish villages as far as 25 miles inside northern Iraq on Saturday, causing heavy Iraqi Kurdish civilian casualties. The air raids Friday injured seven Iraqi Kurdish civilians, he said.

“These are centers of civilian population and refugees in Kurdistan and do not contain any headquarters for armed groups,” Banaa said.