The military continues to follow terrorist members who took part in the Oct. 3 attack," the General Staff said in a statement. On Sunday night, the military shelled two PKK groups detected in Avashin-Basyan region in northern Iraq near the border. On Monday morning, jet fighters hit another group of terrorists inside northern Iraq. "Our warplanes achieved their mission and came back to base safely," the statement said. There was no immediate indication about whether the raids had caused casualties or what damage had been caused.
On Monday afternoon a second aerial strike was directed towards Buzul Mountain in Hakkari.

Monday's attack was the second cross-border aerial operation against the PKK following Friday's assault on a military outpost in the Aktütün area in the border town of Şemdinli. The attack caused national outrage and led to questions over whether there was an intelligence failure. The military denied any such failure and said most of the casualties were caused by heavy weapons fire from northern Iraq.

The incident has strained ties between Iraq and Turkey, which accuses its neighbor of not doing enough to combat the PKK, based in mountainous northern Iraq. Ankara has delivered a diplomatic note to Baghdad demanding that Iraq take measures to prevent a repetition of such attacks. Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Hasan Iğsız told a media briefing on Sunday that the Kurdish administration running northern Iraq gave no support to Turkey's efforts to combat the PKK. "We expect them to recognize the PKK as a terrorist group and stop the support offered to this group," said Iğsız.

Iraqi Kurdish officials, on the other hand, yesterday denied accusations that the PKK had acquired heavy weapons used in Friday's attack from the Kurdish-run northern Iraq. Jabbar Yawar, a spokesman for the local peshmerga forces in northern Iraq, told the Cihan news agency in Arbil that the Kurdish administration did not help the PKK in any way to attack the Turkish military.

"We have no connection with the PKK, militarily, politically or commercially. We are very sorry for this incident. The PKK did a very bad thing," Yawar told Cihan. "We are deeply saddened by the death of 15 soldiers and we strongly condemn this incident." Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish administration, also condemned the PKK attack on Sunday.

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