The deaths came days after Turkey's top army general repeated his call on the government to allow a cross-border operation into northern Iraq to crush PKK camps there.

  Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül was quoted on Friday as saying plans had been drawn up for such an incursion but it remains unclear whether the government will give the green light.

  The United States, Turkey's NATO ally, and the Baghdad government have both urged Ankara not to send troops across the border, fearing destabilization of Iraq's most stable region.

  But the government, which faces elections in July, is under heavy domestic pressure to take tough action as the death toll among soldiers and security forces mounts.

  Ankara holds the PKK responsible for 30,000 deaths since the group began its armed campaign for a Kurdish homeland in Turkey's southeast region in 1984.

  Turkey considers the organization a terrorist group as do the United States and the European Union.