Murat Karayilan, a senior military commander of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, was injured in the left leg last month when Iranian forces shelled Kurdish rebel hideouts across the border in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq, according to NTV.

He was treated in a private hospital in Baghdad and left for the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniyah after being discharged, the channel said.

Thousands of PKK militants have found refuge in mountainous northern Iraq since 1999 when the group declared a unilataral ceasefire in its bloody campaign for Kurdish self-rule in southeast Turkey.

The truce was called off in June 2004. Since then, Ankara says, the rebels have been increasingly crossing into Turkey to engage in anti-government violence.

Iran, which has its own restive Kurdish minority, has also been battling infiltrations by both the PKK and Pejak, an Iranian Kurdish group linked to the PKK.

In May, Baghdad accused Iranian forces of entering several kilometers into Iraq and shelling PKK positions.

The PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, took up arms in 1984. The conflict has claimed more than 37,000 lives.

Ankara has long pressed Washington and Baghdad to clamp down on PKK hideouts in northern Iraq, but has been told that US and Iraqi forces are swamped by violence in other parts of the conflict-torn country.

During a visit to Ankara last week, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Baghdad was ready to revive three-way talks with Turkey and the United States to discuss measures to curb the PKK.