Turkey's army said it entered northern Iraq on Saturday to tackle up a group of up to 60 Kurdish rebels, a day after Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's Cabinet authorised a cross-border operation against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). It was not clear whether the incursion was a major operation by Nato member Turkey aimed at destroying bases of the PKK.
Eight Turkish soldiers, kidnapped last month in an ambush by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, were released in northern Iraq, a PKK official said on Sunday. The release of the soldiers came a day after the Iraqi government vowed to hunt down Kurdish guerrilla leaders responsible for cross-border raids into Turkey.
Turkish police foiled a bomb attack in the capital, Ankara, on Tuesday, the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks on the United States. Ankara's governor Kemal Onal said police had found a van packed with explosives near a multi-storey carpark in a central district of the city of four million.