The Turkish military Sunday accused Iraqi Kurds of aiding Turkish Kurdish rebels holed up in their autonomous enclave in northern Iraq after the militants killed at least 15 soldiers in a daytime attack near the border.
The charge came from the deputy chief of the army as top government and military officials joined thousands of mourners across the country for the funerals of the soldiers slain in Friday's attack by Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels on a military outpost in the mountainous south-east.
"We have no support at all from the northern Iraqi administration (against the rebels). Let aside any support, they are providing (the rebels with) infrastructural capabilities such as hospitals and roads," General Hasan Igsiz told a press conference here.
"Our expectation is that (the PKK) be acknowledged as a terrorist organisation there and that support for the rebels be eliminated," he said.
Ankara has long accused the Iraqi Kurds of tolerating the PKK on their territory, where it says the militants easily obtain weapons and explosives for attacks on Turkish targets across the border.
Iraqi authorities have repeatedly pledged to curb the PKK, but say that the group's hideouts in mountainous regions are difficult to access. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan also issued a fresh appeal to Iraqi Kurds to take action as he joined an estimated crowd of 2,000 in Armutlu, a village near Ankara, to lay one of the soldiers to rest.
"There are measures to be taken against the (PKK) hideouts. We are expecting positive action on the ground," he said. Senior officials will meet Thursday to discuss further measures against the rebels, Erdogan added after the funeral where mourners shouted anti-PKK slogans and demanded the execution of the group's leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been serving a life sentence since 1999. "The martyrs are immortal, the motherland is indivisible," the crowd chanted as soldiers carried the coffin, wrapped in a Turkish flag, on their shoulders.
Grief for the victims and anger against the PKK also poured out at the other funeral ceremonies, held in nine provinces, including one in Eskisehir, which was attended by President Abdullah Gul.
Television stations assessed their numbers at about 10,000. In south-eastern Turkey, where the attack took place, the army moved soldiers and equipment to border regions, Anatolia news agency reported. Helicopters flew reconnaissance flights over routes used by the PKK and soldiers positioned howitzers in the mountains, it said.
In the bloodiest fighting this year, PKK rebels attacked the outpost in the rugged mountains of the border province of Hakkari Friday afternoon under cover of heavy weapons fire from neighbouring northern Iraq, killing 15 soldiers. Twenty-three rebels were killed in the ensuing fighting lasting late into the night during which Turkish forces responded with artillery fire and attack helicopters pounded rebel positions.
Igsiz said two other soldiers still remained unaccounted for and a search was underway, but added that the army believed them to have been killed.
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