SULAIMANIYA, Iraq—Turkish warplanes bombed an area inside Iraq near the border with Turkey on Tuesday, but no one was hurt in the strike, an Iraqi Kurdish border guard official said.
The official, Colonel Hussein Tamar, director of the border guard command in the Iraqi Kurdish province of Dahuk, said villages near the border were hit but the area was depopulated because residents had fled earlier attacks this month.
A Reuters reporter in the Turkish city of Diyarbakir saw four F-16 jets take off early on Tuesday from the main air base in southeastern Turkey. The Turkish military was not immediately available for comment.
In a speech to his political party, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan did not refer directly to Tuesday's attack but defended cross-border strikes, which he said targeted only PKK separatist guerrillas.
"No matter who says what, we are using and continue to use air and land operations within the framework of authority granted by international law," he said.
"Nobody can object to that if Turkey is responding to attacks against its unity, citizens and soldiers."
Turkey has repeatedly bombed areas in northern Iraq in pursuit of PKK rebels over the past few weeks. Ground troops have also made occasional cross-border raids, although a large-scale assault is seen as unlikely, especially in winter.
Turkey says it has the right to pursue PKK guerrillas in cross-border raids after the Iraq-based rebels carried out a number of deadly attacks in Turkey.
U.S. and Iraqi leaders say they support Turkey's right to hit back at the separatists, but want action to be limited in scale and coordinated to avoid destabilising northern Iraq.
The U.S. embassy in Ankara declined to comment immediately on Tuesday's strike.
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