Turkish troops enter northern Iraq

A group of about 300 Turkish troops have crossed over the border into Kurdish territory in northern Iraq.

A senior Iraqi military source said that the Turkish troops were lightly armed and moved into the Gali Rash area, a mountainous district near the border early on Tuesday.

This first ground incursion comes as Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, made an unannounced visit to Kirkuk in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

Turkey says it wants to flush out Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) militants that carry out attacks on Turkey from bases in Iraq.

A Turkish military official said the soldiers intervened when they PKK militants across the border. There were no reports of any casualties from what he described as "a limited clash" with the separatists.

"Two PKK groups were spotted just across the border and it was determined that they were planning attacks and a battalion of soldiers intervened," the military official told the Reuters news agency.

Turkish ground force

Jabbar Yawar, a spokesman for the Kurdish peshmerga security force, confirmed the incursion, saying that the Turkish force had entered on foot, carrying only light weapons.

"The area they entered is a deserted area and there is no Iraqi force or peshmerga deployed there," he said.

A website linked to the political party of Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, said as many as 700 Turkish troops had gone as far as 8km into Iraq.

Fouad Hussein, head of the office of Kurdish regional president, Mahmoud Barzani, said: "We condemn this incursion. Turkey wants to transfer the problem on to the territory of Iraqi Kurdistan."

Turkey says it has a right to use force to combat the estimated 3,000 separatists who shelter across the border northern Iraq.

Abdullah Gul, Turkey's president, said on Tuesday that Ankara's only goal was to target the PKK.

"There are no other goals. Iraq is Turkey's neighbour and we want to save the Iraqis from this trouble of terror," Gul was quoted as saying by state news agency Anatolian.

Turkish warplanes bombed villages in northern Iraq over the weekend and the government in Baghdad complained that at least one civilian woman was killed.

The United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday that Turkish bombardment had forced 1,800 people to leave their homes.

"The shelling is apparently ongoing and we don't know if more people are displaced," Astrid van Genderen Stor, UNHCR spokeswoman in Geneva, said. "Winter has set in and living conditions are very harsh."

Source: Agencies