"Yesterday and today, the villages of Rizka, Maradu and Kanira -- close to the Iranian border -- were periodically bombarded by the Iranians," the spokesman Ahmed Denis told AFP.

"Turkish artillery shelled the Sidikan district, near where the Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish borders meet, but inside Iraq," he added.

He had no immediate word on casualties.

PKK rear-bases in border districts of northern Iraq have been the target of repeated attack by the Turkish and Iranian militaries in recent weeks.

Blacklisted as a terror group by the European Union and the United States, the PKK took up arms for self-rule in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast in 1984, triggering a conflict that has claimed some 44,000 lives.

An Iranian rebel group, the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), operates out of bases in the same area and is close to the PKK.