Turkey shells north Iraq border: Kurdish official

By Shamal Aqrawi

ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - The Turkish military shelled the Iraq border region early on Sunday, but there were no casualties, a Kurdish military official said.

While Turkish shelling of the border area is not unusual, tension has been growing since Wednesday when Turkey's parliament authorized troops to conduct cross-border raids into northern Iraq to hunt Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) rebels using the region as a base.

The leader of Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdish region Masoud Barzani said dialogue was the best option to solve the PKK problem and the Kurds in Iraq would not take sides in any battle.

But he added Kurdistan would defend itself if Turkish forces launched an incursion and attacked Kurdish targets.

"We are not going to be caught up in the PKK and Turkish war, but if Kurdistan region is targeted, then we are going to defend our citizens," Barzani told reporters after meeting Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, also a Kurd.

Talabani said the Turkish shelling was an "unjustified escalation" adding that Iraqis do not want war. He said Iraq will discuss the tension with Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan when he arrives in Baghdad this week.

Turkey's decision to hunt down PKK rebels in northern Iraq has alarmed Washington as it fears any incursion would bring chaos to the region, threaten oil supplies and hurt U.S. efforts to quell violence elsewhere in Iraq.

"This morning at 6 a.m. (11 p.m. on Saturday) they shelled about 11 areas along the borders. There were no casualties," the Kurdish official in Iraq told Reuters.

Turkish security sources said earlier Kurdish rebels killed at least 13 Turkish soldiers in an ambush near the Iraqi border on Sunday. It was not immediately clear whether the shelling and the attack were linked.

The deputy governor of the Kurdish province of Dahuk, Gorkeis Sulaiman, said the Turkish shelling targeted areas close to the towns of Zakhu and Amadiya, destroying a bridge linking two villages near Amadiya.

Residents in Zakhu gave a similar version of events.

"Today at dawn the Turkish artillery shelling started in villages around Zakhu. We were sleeping and we all jumped from our beds. We thought that war had started," said a man in his 50s in Zakhu. "My children started screaming."

"I called relatives in the surrounding villages and they told us that heavy Turkish shelling was taking place. Orchards had been burned and a bridge destroyed," said the man, who declined to give his name.

Iraq repeatedly has called for Turkey to avoid any military incursion and stressed further dialogue is the way to resolve the problem of Kurdish separatists based in Iraq.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said last week he wanted members of the PKK fighting for a Kurdish homeland to leave northern Iraq as soon as possible.

(Additional reporting by Sherko Raouf)