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Blast Kills at Least 63 Shiite Pilgrims in Iraq
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The Turkish military said a total of 112 guerrillas and 15 Turkish troops had been killed in the four days of fighting.
"Terrorist infrastructure in the region is being destroyed in a way that cannot be repaired in a short time," the military said in a statement.
A PKK spokesman, Ahmed Denize, said the guerrillas had killed 48 Turkish soldiers and that four PKK soldiers had been killed.
Denize also said the group had shot down a Turkish helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade Saturday afternoon near a village on the Iraq-Turkey border. The Turkish military said the helicopter failed "for unknown reasons."
"We have given them a strong smack," said Denize, who added that more Turkish soldiers were coming across the border every day. "And if the Turkish street knows what is really going on, they will ask for this war to be over, because of what they are losing every day."
The prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Nechirvan Barzani, expressed concern that the Turkish operation had gone beyond targeting the PKK and was harming civilians and the economy of northern Iraq. He said he was particularly concerned that Turkey had destroyed at least three bridges near the border.
Barzani also criticized the U.S. government for allowing Turkish aircraft to enter Iraqi airspace, and he said the Iraqi central government was not taking a sufficiently firm stand against the incursion. He said the region's president, Massoud Barzani -- his father -- had sent an urgent message to President Bush requesting that he intervene to urge Turkey to leave Iraq.
"The operations, if they continue, they will lead to instability in Iraq," he said.
Partlow reported from Irbil. Correspondent Ellen Knickmeyer in Istanbul and special correspondents Saad Sarhan in Najaf and Saad al-Izzi in Baghdad contributed to this report.
