BAGHDAD — Two Iraqi soldiers were killed in rare clashes Sunday with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the north of the country where the group has bases, the army said overnight.
The PKK, seen as a "terrorist" group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984.
It has rear bases in the Qandil Mountain area of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.
An Iraqi military statement said PKK fighters "attacked an army checkpoint in the [northern] Nineveh province... [and] two soldiers were killed" around 100 kilometres west of Mosul near the Syria border.
Five PKK members were wounded in the clashes which erupted when an Iraqi soldier manning the checkpoint asked the group for a permit, usually issued by Iraqi security forces, that would allow them to go across.
"It is the first time that we have confrontations of this scale in the region," Mohammad Khalil, the mayor of the nearby city of Sinjar, told AFP.
Like Turkey, Iran has for decades fought the PKK affiliate, the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), which also has rear bases in neighbouring Iraq.
The Turkish military has often bombed PKK bases in Iraq's mountainous regions.
In January, one person was killed when Turkish troops opened fire at Iraqi Kurds who stormed a Turkish army position in north-western Iraq to protest the deaths of four civilians in alleged Turkish bombardment.