Turkish tanks advancing near borders with Iraq

Turkish tanks were seen advancing towards the Iraqi borders on a background of Turkish threats to raid northern Iraq to hunt down fighters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) holed up in mountainous areas on the Iraqi side of the joint frontiers, border guards and witnesses in Duhuk said on Friday.
"More than 17 Turkish tanks drew near three kilometers from the district of Zakho, close to the Iraqi-Turkish borders," Col. Hussein Tamr told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

Eyewitnesses from the village of Qargula, western Zakho, said they saw Turkish tanks near the borders where their village lies on Friday morning.
The crisis on the Iraqi-Turkish borders unprecedentedly flared up recently after the PKK, or Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan in Kurdish, which is banned in Turkey, escalated operations against Turkish forces. Fighters of the PKK had killed, wounded and captured more than 40 Turkish soldiers lately.
After the PKK escalations, the Turkish government received the thumbs up from parliament to carry out a military operation against the PKK inside Iraqi Kurdistan region territories.
An official source in the Border Guard forces told VOI last week that 15 artillery shells fell on areas near the Aisel river that separates the Iraqi-Turkish borders but caused no casualties.
Warplanes, believed to be Turkish, had bombarded several village in Duhuk province, 460 km north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Link