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Iraq Kurds accuse Turkey of shelling border village

BAGHDAD, May 17, 2006 (AFP) - An official in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish regional government accused Turkish troops of shelling a village close to the common border Wednesday without causing casualties.

"This afternoon Turkish artillery hit the Kurdish village of Kafr Shur in the Kanimasi area near the borders of Iran, Iraq and Turkey," the official said, adding that three shells struck the village.

Turkey has long reserved the right to send troops into northern Iraq on hot pursuit operations against Kurdish rebels it says operate rear bases in the region.

But since the US-led invasion of 2003, it has not repeated the sort of cross-border operations it conducted when the region was administered by Iraqi Kurdish rebels in defiance of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Turkey has criticised its US ally for not doing more to rein in the activities of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the border area.

Blacklisted as a terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States as well as Turkey, the PKK has been fighting Turkish troops for self-rule in the southeast of the country since 1984.