Turkey mourns 24 soldiers killed by PKK

Turkey mourned the 24 Turkish soldiers killed in a Kurdistan Workers' Party attack, and the government attacked the militant group's bases in northern Iraq. Turkey undertook the cross-border offensive against the terrorist group known by the initials PKK after the group struck military and police targets along the border Wednesday, killing two dozen soldiers and wounding 18 others, Today's Zaman reported Thursday. About a dozen warplanes conducted sorties out of two military bases in the country's southeast until sunrise, state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corp. said. On Thursday, PKK terrorists wounded three soldiers in a roadside bombing near Altinova, Today's Zaman said. Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed a strong response to the PKK and urged Iraq and the Iraqi Kurdish administration to try to prevent PKK attacks from Iraqi soil. Meanwhile, an Iraqi political analyst charged that the Iraqi government failed to react forcefully to the recent Turkish actions in Iraq's Kurdistan border areas, Aswat al-Iraq news agency said. Kurdish analyst Ribin Rassoul told the news agency the government "won't have a firm response towards the Turkish invasion."