"It is our duty to find and eliminate terrorists wherever they are," Gen. Ilker Basbug, head of the military, said in response to a question about the possibility of a major incursion. He said the military has been using drones, bought from Israel, over northern Iraq to monitor rebel positions over the past 10 days.
Turkish warplanes often have bombed Kurdish rebel hideouts there, and troops have crossed the border to hunt the rebels down. The last major ground incursion into Iraq was in February 2008, but the rebels made a comeback after the troops withdrew.
The military is now hoping to benefit from the use of drones to pinpoint rebel movements and inflict a heavier blow on the guerrillas along the mountainous border that is extremely difficult to control.
On the Turkish side of the border, the troops closed in on a group of rebels in a major offensive on the slopes of Kupeli and Cirav mountains in Sirnak province, bordering Iraq, the state-run Anatolia news agency said.
Gen. Basbug, speaking to reporters in the western city of Canakkale, rejected allegations that an intelligence failure led to a cross-border rebel raid that left nine of the soldiers dead on Saturday. He said the soldiers had noticed some movement in the area prior to the surprise attack, but it was not possible to positively identify them as guerrillas.
Hurriyet newspaper, citing military authorities, said the troops opened fire but the rebels kept their silence and fired the first rocket-propelled grenade two hours later on the Turkish unit at Gediktepe, a hill overlooking a narrow border crossing, at an altitude of 2,540 meters. It said Kurdish rebels then opened fire with heavy machine guns from positions across the border.
Basbug said about 60 rebels attacked Gediktepe and the total number of assailants, including those across the border, could be around 100.
