Families in Iraq flee after Turkey bombing

Sulaimaniya, Iraq: Turkish warplanes targeting Kurdish rebels bombed villages deep in northern Iraq on Sunday, killing one woman and forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes, local officials said.

In Ankara, the Turkish military's General Staff said in a statement its warplanes had attacked targets of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which uses northern Iraq as a base from which to attack security forces inside Turkey.

Private broadcaster CNN Turk quoted unnamed Turkish military sources denying that Iraqi villages had been targeted.

If the death of the woman is confirmed it would be the first since Turkey stepped up artillery bombardments and airstrikes on suspected PKK bases in the Qandil mountains in October.

The mayor of Sankasar town, north of the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya, Abdullah Ebrahim, said 200 families had fled their homes in villages in the Sankasar and Jarawa administrative areas and at least 10 houses had been destroyed.

Commenting on the airstrikes, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his government was determined to use every kind of instrument in the fight against terrorism -diplomatic, political and military.

"We will continue to wage this battle for our nation's unity and peace, both inside and outside Turkey," he said in televised comments made during a visit to the Aegean port of Izmir.

The mayors of Jarawa and Sankasar said the airstrikes were launched at 2am and continued for several hours. The villages targeted are about 100km south of the Turkish border.