Thousands of Kurdish guerrillas have crossed the border into Iran to escape a threatened Turkish offensive against their mountain redoubts in northern Iraq, a former rebel leader said.When and if the Turkish troops arrive, they will only be “chasing shadows”, Osman Ocalan, brother of jailed rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, told AFP in an interview in his home in Koya in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region. “I know that since last month thousands of PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) members have crossed into Iran,” said Osman Ocalan, who spent 18 years fighting Turkish troops before abandoning the armed struggle in 2004.
“At least a thousand crossed into Turkey,” he added. “Only a small number remain in Iraq.” PKK camps, said Ocalan, are scattered in the remote region where the borders of Iraq, Iran and Turkey meet. “They are constantly moving from one country to the other. They don’t stay long in one place. “The aim is not to offer targets. They know that one should not face the Turks directly, but rather carry out specific guerrilla operations against them.”