Turkish military aircraft attacked a handful of abandoned villages in northern Iraq on Tuesday, Iraqi officials said, in the first cross-border assault since tensions between Turkey and Kurdish rebels began intensifying last month. Turkish officials also said that Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey had killed four Turkish soldiers and wounded nine in clashes. It was unclear whether the confrontations were connected, but they appeared to signal a revival of the fighting between Turkish troops and the Kurdistan WorkersÂ’ Party, or P.K.K., a nationalist group of militants in Turkey and Iraq. This represented the most significant military action between the groups since a round of diplomacy among American, Iraqi and Turkish officials early this month, but they did not immediately set off additional attacks.
The Turkish attack, in the early morning, in and around the remote village of Zahku, killed no one and damaged little. Officials from Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region could not agree on whether helicopters or planes had been used, and they defined the assault as a scouting mission, possibly in search of P.K.K. positions. “It affected nobody and nothing,” said Fouad Hussein, chief of staff for Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader of northern Iraq. “It may have been to discover something, so they could see something.”
The Turkish government has massed tens of thousands of troops along IraqÂ’s northern border, but so far they have not made a major attack. American officials have been pressing for a diplomatic solution, fearing that an invasion would destabilize Iraq, but no agreement has been reached.
The attack on Tuesday on Turkish troops will probably not help the effort. It occurred in Sirnak Province in the southeast, Turkish officials said. A statement posted on the Turkish Army Web site said that an operation in search of rebels continued.
The Web site of a Turkish news channel, NTV, reported that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a meeting of his political party on Monday night, “If we don’t see concrete things from the other side an operation is near” — echoing comments he has been making for weeks.
American officials in Baghdad declined to comment on either attack. Leaders in Iraq’s autonomous region of Kurdistan questioned how Turkey could have crossed the border by air without American approval. “The sky is in the hands of the Americans, so they knew about this attack and they know Turkish planes entered Iraqi territory,” said Mr. Hussein. “We hope this will not be repeated again.”