"A small-scale operation conducted by ground troops as part of hot pursuit... dealt a heavy blow" on a group of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants who had tried to infiltrate Turkey overnight, the Turkish military said on its website late Tuesday.

The troops penetrated "several kilometres" into northern Iraq from the southeast Turkish province of Hakkari, the statement said.

It did not indicate how many troops took part in the incursion, which began overnight after the army "received images" of a rebel group attempting to sneak across the border.

Local Iraqi officials said about 500 soldiers crossed into remote areas in northern Iraq and began withdrawing by Tuesday afternoon.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, has waged a bloody campaign for Kurdish self-rule in southeast Turkey since 1984. The conflict has claimed more than 37,000 lives.

The incursion followed Turkish air and artillery strikes Sunday on positions in northern Iraq along the Turkish frontier and in the Qandil mountains to the east, where the PKK is known to have camps.

"It is not possible to give the number of PKK terrorists rendered ineffective in the air offensive," the army said Tuesday.

"But it is a fact that the PKK suffered very heavy losses both in terms of infrastructure and human resources," it said.

The military also issued a fresh denial that civilians were hit in the raids, blaming reports of villages being bombed and hospitals and schools destroyed on PKK sympathisers among Iraqi officials seeking to mislead the international community.

"Such reports are the result of panic and a clear demonstration of the support given to the PKK by some people who are influential in the north of Iraq and in the Iraqi central government," it said.

Ankara has accused Iraqi Kurds, who run an autonomous administration in northern Iraq, of tolerating and even supporting the PKK.

"It is obvious that... hundreds of civilians would have died if inhabited villages were bombed," the military's statement said.

The PKK has said that five of its members and two civilians died in the bombing. Local officials said a woman was killed.

Earlier Tuesday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the military was doing "what is necessary" to combat the PKK, which has stepped up violence this year.

"Our army is doing what is necessary and will continue to do so.... Terrorism is not a local phenomenon, it is international," Erdogan said.

Erdogan insisted that Turkey has no claims against Iraq's territorial integrity nor any hostility for its civilians.

"But there are PKK camps there.... (The PKK) are terrorists, they are our enemies," he added.

The army voiced determination to continue cross-border operations in line with a parliamentary authorisation in October that approved such incursions to end the safe haven the PKK enjoys in northern Iraq.

Turkish chief of staff General Yasar Buyukanit has said the United States gave the green light for Sunday's air raids by providing "intelligence" and opening Iraqi airspace.

Tacit US support for the incursion came with the Pentagon promising to keep supplying Ankara with intelligence to "deal with" the PKK and the White House calling the group "a threat" to Turkey, the United States and Iraq.

After talks with Erdogan in November, US President George W. Bush called the PKK a common enemy and promised to provide its NATO ally with real-time intelligence on rebel movements.

Bush's pledge was seen as tacit US approval for limited cross-border Turkish strikes against the PKK to head off the threat of a large-scale Turkish incursion into northern Iraq.

However a prominent think tank said Wednesday that Turkey can probably never defeat the PKK, and cross-border attacks on its bases in Iraq are almost certainly futile.

"The PKK is a well-motivated force that enjoys local support and the protection afforded by the inaccessible terrain of the border regions," Chatham House said in a report.

"Turkey can probably never defeat the PKK and any further incursions across the border are likely to be futile," it added.

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