"We will take our operations to all Turkish cities if the government continues its attacks against us," spokesman Ahmed Denis told AFP in the Iraqi Kurdistan regional capital of Arbil.

"Turkey wants to us take us towards war," he said. "She is not sincere in dealing with the Kurdish issue and doesn't want to deal with this issue peacefully.

"The measures she has taken so far are just a hoax," he added, in allusion to the so-called "Kurdish opening" announced by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan amid great fanfare last October.

The initiative has faltered amid an opposition outcry that Ankara is bowing to the PKK, as well as persistent rebel attacks and a judicial onslaught on Kurdish activists.

Denis's comments came after PKK fighters killed 11 Turkish soldiers in an attack on an army post and a mine explosion near the border, prompting retaliatory air raids on suspected rebel targets inside Iraq.

Erdogan denounced the attack on the army post in the far southeastern town of Semdinli as "cowardly" and vowed that it would have no effect on Turkey's determination to fight the PKK "to the end."

In a message of condolence to the armed forces chief, he said Turkey was willing to "pay the price" to "annihilate" the PKK.

On Friday, the Turkish military said it had lost 43 troops to PKK attacks since March. It said it had killed 130 rebel fighters inside Turkey and in an air raid on rebel hideouts in Iraq over the same period.

But Denis took issue with the rebel death toll given by the Turkish army. He said it was true that the PKK had lost 130 of its fighters but said that the losses covered a much longer period stretching back to April 2009.

The Turkish military had predicted that the PKK would further intensify and spread its attacks.

Erdogan charged on Friday that the rebels were seeking to undermine his government's initiative to boost Kurdish freedoms and investment in the country's impoverished southeast in a bid to peacefully end the conflict.

On Saturday, he said: "Turkey will not give in to the spiral of violence" unleashed by the PKK.

"We will not turn back on our commitment to democratisation which hinders the terrorist organisation," he said in a statement.

On Friday, Turkish prosecutors charged 151 Kurds, among them popular politicians, as part a massive investigation into an alleged urban wing of the PKK.

The conflict with the rebel group, considered a terrorist organisation by much of the international community as well as Ankara, has claimed more than 45,000 lives since it broke out in 1984, according to the Turkish army.