ANKARA Turkish warplanes have bombed northern Iraq, killing at least 38 civilians and wounding a further 11, an Iraqi Kurdish party which controls much of the remote region said in a statement on Thursday.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) said the jets attacked an area inside Iraq close to the borders of Turkey and Iran, where Turkish Kurd guerrillas loyal to captured rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan have a number of bases.
"Regrettably...on August 15, while Turkish warplanes were pursuing PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) targets... a pasture camp inside Iraqi Kurdistan belonging to a number of Iraqi Kurdish herdsmen and their families fell victim to the Turkish air raid," said the KDP statement faxed to Reuters.
"As a result 38 civilians were killed, 11 injured and four are missing." Turkish military officials said they knew nothing of the incident.
"It is out of the question for us to bomb civilians," an army official said.
"Air operations in northern Iraq target the PKK," he said, referring to Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers Party.
The Iraqi Kurdish satellite television channel Kurdistan TV showed the wounded, several of them small children, lying on hospital beds in the regional capital Arbil, their heads and limbs in bandages and slings.
"We were grazing our animals in the summer pastures," said one woman. "Suddenly the planes flew over, then they flew back again and there were explosions everywhere.
I don't know what happened then, but everywhere was covered in blood." "We have nothing to do with the PKK," said another woman. "We don't know why they bombed us, we were just grazing our animals." The Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Politika, close to the PKK, said on Thursday 32 civilians had been killed in the attack.
(Reuter)