Ankara "wants to control a big part of Kurdistan to use as a base to attack cities in northern Iraq", PKK leader Murat Karayilan told AFP from his hideout in the remote Qandil mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan.

On Friday the Turkish military announced the end of its incursion in the mountains of northern Iraq, launched on February 21 and aimed at flushing out PKK rebels from the area.

"That was Turkey's goal, but it could not fulfill it because of the resistance by the PKK fighters. Their operation against our strongholds failed," he said.

Turkey "attacked our forces on three fronts in the Zap region, but failed to achieve their goals even though the Turkish army has advanced technology and jet fighters that flew over the combat zone and bombed us non-stop".

According to Karayilan, Turkey launched the military operation with the goal of crippling the PKK but also to weaken Iraqi Kurdistan and "prevent the return of Kirkuk to Kurdistan".

The Turkish attacks were "against all Kurds, not just the PKK," he said.

The contested oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk has a large Kurdish population, but has never been part of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish regional government.

In the 1980s, President Saddam Hussein sought to change the ethnic composition of the city by moving Arabs into the area.

The Turkish military said the offensive dealt a serious blow to the Turkish Kurdish rebel group, with at least 240 militants killed and dozens of hideouts, training camps and ammunition depots destroyed.

Karayilan said the PKK had killed 130 Turkish soldiers and suffered five only casualties of its own.

The Turkish army acknowledged that the PKK -- listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community --- had not been destroyed, but said that northern Iraq was no longer "a safe region for them".

The offensive included ground assaults and air raids and targeted rebel positions in and around Zap, a mountainous snow-bound region near the Turkish border, where a major PKK base and training camp is located.

The PKK took up arms for self-rule in Kurdish-majority southeast Turkey in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.