(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-12-26 10:15

ISTANBUL, Turkey -- Two Turkish airstrikes this month destroyed more than 200 Kurdish rebel targets in the mountains of northern Iraq, killing hundreds of insurgents, the military said Tuesday.

An aerial combination photograph provided by the Turkish Chief of General Staff on December 25, 2007 shows the Razhava-Zap camp, with members of the illegal Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), in northern Iraq before (L) and after it was bombed by Turkish Air Forces on December 16, 2007. [Agencies]

Up to 175 rebels were killed on December 16 alone, the military said in a statement posted on its Web site. The military said other hideouts were hit in a cross-border airstrike on Saturday, followed by artillery fire.

In Iraq, a Kurdish official said information from the rebels cast doubt on Turkey's claims.

"These are exaggerated figures," said Mahmoud Uthman, a Kurdish leader and member of parliament. "Most of the villages (that were attacked) were abandoned."

Iraqi officials said the December 16 operation -- the first confirmed by Turkey since the US-led invasion in 2003 -- violated Iraqi sovereignty. That operation was followed by an incursion by ground forces, who spotted a group of Kurdish rebels preparing to cross into Turkey.

"A total of 33 sets of targets (more than 200 individual targets) exclusively used by the terrorists were hit by our warplanes and our artillery," the statement said of the December 16 operation.

The Turkish military released photographs and footage it said were shot from planes before and after the air assaults. Most of the pictures were too blurry to distinguish spots marked as rebel facilities, but in some, purported camp areas and demolished buildings were visible.

The last confirmed offensive across the Turkish-Iraqi border came this past Saturday, when Turkish airplanes entered Iraqi air space and bombed suspected rebel targets.

A spokesman for Iraqi Kurdistan's Peshmerga security forces said earlier that Turkish fighter jets also bombed Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq on Sunday.

But a US official in Ankara said Tuesday that there was no evidence of a Sunday air assault. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

In an earlier statement, the military said it was hard to determine precisely how many rebels died in recent attacks but put the figure in the hundreds.

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