Turkish helicopter gunships attacked abandoned villages inside Iraq on Tuesday, Iraqi officials said. It was the first major Turkish action against Kurdish fighters since Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met President Bush in Washington earlier this month.
Col. Hussein Tamir, an Iraqi Army officer who supervises border guards, said the airstrikes occurred before dawn on abandoned villages near Zakhu. There were no casualties, he said, according to the AP.
A spokesman for the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, corroborated Tamir's account.
"The United States has declared the PKK as the common enemy. The struggle against this enemy will be maintained until it is eliminated," Erdogan told lawmakers in Parliament Tuesday.
