(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-12-26 10:15

In a province inside Turkey near the Iraqi border, Turkish troops backed by helicopter gunships killed five Kurdish rebels on Tuesday, the military said in a separate statement posted on its Web site.

Officials in Iraq have claimed civilians were killed in the attacks, but the Turkish statement said any reports of civilian casualties were a fabrication and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said civilians were not targeted.

"Air operations or ground operations -- we will do whatever necessary within the limits of what international law allows us to do," Erdogan told legislators from his ruling party on Tuesday. "Civilians have never been our targets."

The US has been providing intelligence to Turkey on the Kurdish rebels since a November 5 meeting between Erdogan and President Bush, who said the rebel group was an enemy of the US, Turkey and Iraq.

A coordination center has been set up in Ankara so Turks, Iraqis and Americans can share information. The December 16 airstrike was due to intelligence shared by Washington.

"The Kurdish leaders ... feel betrayed by the Americans," Uthman said. "There are discussions now with the American side to try to halt these operations. The Americans are the only ones who can halt them," Uthman said.

The rebel group Kurdistan Workers' Party, also known as PKK, has waged a war for autonomy in parts of Turkey near Syria, Iraq and Iran since 1984. The fighting has cost tens of thousands of lives. The US, the European Union and Turkey consider the PKK a terrorist organization.

Turkey has said it would not tolerate more PKK attacks, after a string of deadly ambushes killed dozens of troops in the past months. In October, the Parliament allowed the government to send troops into Iraq to hit rebel bases there.

The Cabinet then authorized the military to hit rebel targets in Iraq.

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