Kurdish regional President Massud Barzani spoke to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmed Davutoglu on the telephone and "expressed his displeasure with the dangerous level the situation has reached," a statement said.

"He requested that the issue not be escalated to that level because peace is the only way to solve problems and years of negotiations are better than one hour of war," Barzani said in a statement.

Davutoglu said Barzani had expressed his "solidarity" with the operation when he spoke to him.

On Friday, the same day Turkey bombed the Islamic State group in Syria for the first time, Turkish jets also struck positions held by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Iraq.

According to a medical source, two civilians were wounded in the overnight strikes, which PKK officials said lasted several hours.

The Turkish group has long had camps in the mountains of Iraq's Kurdish region, near the border with Turkey.

The PKK and Iraq's Kurdish leadership have often been at odds in the past but both are involved in the fight against the Islamic State group.