ANKARA: Turkish warplanes bombed on Sunday a Kurdish rebel hideout in northern Iraq where senior militants were believed to be, the army said.

The jets returned to their bases after hitting a Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) hideout in the mountainous Zap region, a major rebel stronghold, the army said in a statement.

It did not specify any casualties from the attack.

The air strike was the seventh in northern Iraq since Oct 3, when PKK rebels crossing from their bases there attacked a Turkish border outpost.

Seventeen soldiers and at least 23 militants were killed, according to the army on Wednesday extended by one year the government’s mandate to order cross-border military operations in northern Iraq against the PKK, which has long enjoyed safe haven in the region.

The army has carried out a series of air raids and a week-long ground incursion against PKK camps in northern Iraq since the government obtained its first one-year mandate on Oct 17, 2007.—AFP