President Tayyip Erdogan said the Turkish military had killed more than 30 Kurdish militants last

Friday in a cross-border operation he described as part of the rebels’ “last struggle”.

Addressing village leaders at the presidential palace yesterday, Erdogan did not say where the targets were, but the military has been bombarding Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) positions in the mountains of northern Iraq as well as the mainly-Kurdish southeast of Turkey following the breakdown of a ceasefire in July.

“More than 30 terrorists have been killed,” Erdogan said, adding that security forces were continuing with operations inside and outside the country.

“These will continue for now, but you should know that this is their last struggle.”

The most intense fighting since the 1990s has engulfed the mainly Kurdish southeast and virtually scotched a peace process Erdogan began three years ago.

More than a hundred security personnel and hundreds of milit-ants have been killed since the ceasefire broke down.

The cross-border operations on PKK have so far been “very effect-ive”, Erdogan said, although he did not elaborate except to say that more than 2,000 militants had been killed.

Separately, the Turkish army announced yesterday that six PKK militants had been killed in operations carried out in the southeastern province of Hakkari overnight.