Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday that U.S. objections would not stop Turkey from crossing into Iraq to eliminate Kurdish rebels.

The Turkish military said it had killed more than 30 insurgents who were poised to launch an attack on the border.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul at the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization foreign ministers' meeting in Ankara, Thursday.
(Burhan Ozbilici/The Associated Press)

President Abdullah Gul said Turkey is running out of patience with the Kurdish separatist attacks. A steady stream of U.S.-made Turkish fighter jets roared into the skies near the Iraqi border, loaded with bombs.

The Turkish military said it had spotted a "group of terrorists" near a military outpost in the province of Semdinli close to the border with Iraq on Tuesday, and fired on them with tanks, artillery and other heavy weaponry. It said the group had been preparing for an attack.

In a statement posted on its website, the military said the troops kept firing on the group as they escaped toward the Iraqi territory. The report increased the official number of rebels killed since Sunday to at least 64.

The Bush administration is urging Turkey not to launch an incursion that would destabilize Iraq's autonomous Kurdish north, the country's most stable region.

But Erdogan said the U.S. desire to protect the north would not hinder Turkey's fight against the rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, who use mountain bases to rest, train and get supplies in relative safety before returning to Turkey to carry out attacks against government forces in the heavily Kurdish southeast.

"They [the Bush administration] might wish that we do not carry out a cross-border offensive, but we make the decision on what we have to do," Erdogan said during a visit to Romania. "We have taken necessary steps in this struggle so far, and now we are forced to take this step and we will take it."

He said the U.S. should repay Turkish assistance for the invasion of Afghanistan with support for Turkey's struggle against the Kurdish rebels, who want autonomy in the southeast.

"Right now, as a strategic ally, the U.S.A. is in a position to support us. We have supported them in Afghanistan," he said.

An AP Television News cameraman saw two F-4 fighter jets flying low along the Iraqi border on an apparent reconnaissance mission, a day after warplanes reportedly pounded rebel positions along the border.

Separately, at least five F-16 warplanes loaded with bombs were seen taking off from a base in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, local reporters said. A batch of F-16s had took off from the same base earlier Thursday as well.