Turkey launches attacks on Kurds

IRAQ: TURKEY STAGED retaliatory airstrikes against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq yesterday as thousands of Turks attended rain-lashed funerals for 15 soldiers killed by the rebels in a cross-border attack from Iraq.

Public anger mounted in Turkey at the inability of civilian leaders to stop attacks by the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. The group has waged a 24-year guerrilla war for greater autonomy for Turkey's minority Kurds from bases in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq.

Mourners booed President Abdullah Gul and prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at funerals yesterday for two of the soldiers killed near the border with Iraq on Friday. Demonstrators elsewhere waved the country's flag in front of parliament and beat and burned effigies of the PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

Turkey's leaders increased demands yesterday for neighbouring Iraq to do more against the Kurdish rebels based there.

"We have no support at all from the northern Iraqi administration," said Gen Hasan Igsiz in the capital, Ankara. "Our expectation is that rebels be acknowledged as a terrorist organisation there and that support for the rebels be eliminated."

Turkish warplanes bombed suspected rebel bases in northern Iraq late yesterday, the military said in a statement.

Turkey has staged several airstrikes in northern Iraq this year. Ground troops also mounted a week-long offensive in Iraq in February. (- LA Times/Washington Post)

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times