Turkish Troops Enter Iraq
Via the AP/CNN: Sources: Thousands of Turkish troops enter Iraq
Several thousand Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq early Wednesday to chase Kurdish guerrillas who operate from bases there, Turkish security officials said.
Two senior security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said the raid was limited in scope and that it did not constitute the kind of large incursion that Turkish leaders have been discussing in recent weeks.
“It is not a major offensive and the number of troops is not in the tens of thousands,” one of the officials told The Associated Press by telephone. The official is based in southeast Turkey, where the military has been battling separatist Kurdish rebels since they took up arms in 1984.
I suppose it depends on the definition of “major offensive”–“thousands” sounds pretty major, although granted not as major as “tens of thousands.”
ABC News sent out an e-mail alert on this as well, but has no link up at the moment.
This could be quite serious and certainly qualifies as “developing.”
No good can come of this. Of course, the Turks are playing it down, both in the CNN article and here:
but still – a ‘hot pursuit’ scenario involving ‘thousands’ of troops?
Cross-border raids and bombardment of camps has been going on for months, maybe years, both from the Turkish and from the Iranian sides. Until it disappeared KurdMedia was reporting this stuff regularly.