"At 12 noon (0900 GMT) today, Turkish aircraft struck the Kurdish districts of Khwakurk and Khnera. The strikes lasted until 3 pm," the spokesman, Ahmed Denis, told AFP.

"Yesterday night, Turkish aircraft also hit these areas for one hour. Since these areas are remote we do not have any information about casualties," he added.

The attacks on the districts close to the common borders between Iraq, Iran and Turkey came after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan held talks in Ankara with Iraqi counterpart Nuri al-Maliki on Christmas Eve.

The prickly issue of PKK rebels hiding in Iraqi mountains along the border was at the centre of their talks, said officials, who added that the two prime ministers vowed to step up their cooperation against the group.

Hours after Maliki's visit, three Turksin soldiers were killed and another nine wounded when PKK rebels armed with automatic weapons attacked an army vehicle in the village of Cizre, near the borders of both Iraq and Syria.

On the eve of Maliki's visit, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, gave fresh assurances that both Baghdad and the Kurdish administration of northern Iraq were determined to purge the region of the PKK.

He said Kurdish parties in northern Iraq would soon convene a meeting to issue a joint appeal to the PKK to abandon its armed struggle.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, took up arms for self-rule in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 44,000 lives.