Turkish troops shelled a border area in northern Iraq for a second day early yesterday in an attack on Kurdish rebels based there, a pro-Kurdish news agency reported. The report could not be confirmed immediately.
The leader of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, Massoud Barzani, confirmed shelling by Turkish troops in Kurdish areas on Sunday but said there was no Turkish incursion.
Yesterday, the Belgium-based Firat news agency, citing local Iraqi Kurdish sources, said Turkish artillery again targeted an area close to the border town of Zakho. On Sunday, the agency said the troops shelled the Hakurk area, further east.
Turkish authorities, who have called the Firat agency a mouthpiece of Kurdistan Workers' Party, known by its Kurdish acronym PKK, were not immediately available to comment.
Kurdish guerrillas have long had camps in the Hakurk area, 15km from the Turkish border.
Turkish troops have occasionally launched brief raids in pursuit of guerrillas in northern Iraq, and have sometimes shelled suspected rebel positions across the border. Turkish authorities rarely acknowledge such military operations, which were more frequent before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Turkey's foreign minister told an EU meeting that Ankara has every right to take measures against Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq.
"I have told them that we have every right to take measures against terrorist activities directed at us from northern Iraq," Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told a news conference.
Turkey will deliver a report to the UN this week spelling out its concerns about Kurdish separatists in Iraq and reaffirming its legal right to take action against them, an official said yesterday.
The news comes as Turkey reinforces its troops along the border with Iraq and the army General Staff stresses its readiness for a cross-border operation to crush separatist rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, known by its Kurdish acronym PKK.
"Diplomacy first," said yesterday's Sabah newspaper headline, saying the UN move prepared the legal and diplomatic ground for a possible military operation, which has already sparked alarm in the US, Turkey's NATO ally.
The Foreign Ministry official said Turkey's permanent UN representative, Baki Ilkin, would hold talks with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this week.
"The terrorism incidents will be explained. A report will be presented concerning the explosives and weapons we have determined are coming [into Turkey] from northern Iraq," the official said.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
RSS