Turkish warplanes struck Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) targets inside northern Iraq on Friday and Saturday, the general staff said.

Turkish soldiers also fired on the PKK targets from the ground, it said in a statement on its website on Saturday.

Army sources had said on Friday that an air operation was carried out on Friday at around 1630GMT.

At least eight planes carried out the operation against the Kurdish separatists, the sources said, adding the bombing had been intense.

The warplanes had fired on a group of rebels in northern Iraq the day before as they tried to cross into Turkey. Clashes also continued inside Turkey on Friday and the general staff said two soldiers had been killed in the mountainous province of Sirnak, which borders Iraq.

Military sources said one was a major and the other a soldier. "We have fighters in the area but they are not concentrated in a single place. This is why we do not have any casualties," PKK spokesman Ahmed Danees told Reuters by telephone in northern Iraq.

The Turkish military had staged an eight-day incursion into northern Iraq in February against the PKK, which uses the neighbouring country as a base from which to launch attacks on Turkey.-Reuters