Turkey said on Tuesday it had launched fresh air strikes on what it said were Kurdish militants in the mountains of northern Iraq.

The defence ministry said it had struck ‘20 targets’ in Asos, Gara, Hakurk, Metina, Qandil and Zap.

It alleged they were ‘caves, bunkers, shelters, depots and installations’ used by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has waged an on-off insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 and is blacklisted as a ‘terrorist organisation’ by Ankara and its Western allies.

The Turkish army, whose incursions onto Iraqi soil are regularly condemned by Baghdad, said it had killed ‘numerous’ militants in its latest assault.

On Saturday, president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey was determined to ‘eliminate’ separatists, arguing that they were a threat to both his country and Iraq.

The PKK has a number of rear bases in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.

For the past quarter century, Turkey has maintained dozens of its own bases there.