Turkish army artillery bombed a village in Iraq near the border against the PKK rebels 2702125

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Defense News - Turkey
 
 
Monday, February 27, 2012, 04:56 PM
 
Turkish army artillery bombed a village in Iraq near the border against the PKK rebels.
The Turkish artillery Monday pounded border areas inside Iraq forcing civilians to leave their villages in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region, an official Kurdish website reported.
     

Turkish army Firtina self-propelled howitzers are seen in a camp near the border with Iraq
(Archive Image)
     

"The Turkish artillery renewed its bombardment at 9:30 a.m. ( 0630 GMT) on villages in Sidkan border area (in Duhok province)," said the official website of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) , a major Kurdish party headed by Iraq President Jalal Talabani.

Residents in the village of Litani in Sidkan said that the Turkish artillery heavily bombed areas around their village, prompting them to leave their homes to safer areas inside the Kurdish region, the Kurdish website said.

Turkish troops sporadically carry out incursions, air strikes and artillery shelling into bordering areas in Iraq's northern Kurdish region in attempts to curb the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) rebels believed to be holed up in mountainous areas in northern Iraq.

Listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, the PKK took up arms in 1984 to create an ethnic homeland in southeastern Turkey. Some 40,000 people have been killed in conflicts involving the PKK over the past over two decades.