The Turkish rockets streaked out of the night sky and slammed into the mountainside next to a village in northern Iraq, setting fire to a swath of grassland and forcing families to dive for cover.

“It was terrifying. All the children were crying,” said Jafar Bahry Kaseem, 56, whose one-storey stone house was one of the closest to the surprise attack on Sunday night, which lasted for about 45 minutes.

“We are very frightened that this village will be shelled at any time. If this continues then we will be forced to leave our home,” said the farmer, dressed in traditional Kurdish fatigues with a green scarf wrapped around his head, as he surveyed the burnt mountainside about 50 metres from his front door.

“The Government should do something,” he told The Times yesterday, voicing a sentiment expressed by many in Anishky, a Kurdish village in the Matin Mountains.

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Ankara is considering mounting a big assault in the mountains of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region to crush Kurdish rebels who are seeking their own homeland in eastern Turkey.

Turkish soldiers are already carrying out low-level shelling operations across the border, hoping to hit the mountain camps of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK).

Sunday’s assault, however, was the deepest into Iraqi territory - affecting Iraqi Kurds who are not members of the PKK - and prompted a sharp reaction from the Kurdish regional government.

“If our people are displaced they lose their cattle, their sheep and their farms. . . We denounce these acts,” said Jamal Abdullah, the regional government’s spokesman.

“We are very worried about this increase of aggression and we are very sorry that Turkey is doing this. Our position is that this is Iraqi sovereignty, not just Kurdish sovereignty. It is also an issue for the [US-led] coalition forces,” he said.

The spokesman emphasised that the Kurdish administration did not support the PKK, which has its roots in Turkey, not Iraq.

“The PKK problem is something between Turkey and its people. We are not involved in this politically, militarily or emotionally,” he said, while declining to comment on what the authorities plan to do in the event of a large-scale Turkish assault.

On the ground in Anishky - one of about eight villages in the Amedi district that were affected by Sunday’s attacks - emotions were running high. “Turkey is not shelling us because of the PKK, it is shelling us because we are Kurds, we are all the same to them,” said Agid Fermus, 30, a father of five and a member of the Peshmerga security force that protects northern Iraq.

“We hope that Turkey will understand that we have nothing to do with the PKK. We are not against Turkey. We do not interfere in their business,” Mr Fermus said.

Huddled on a rocky ledge below a large patch of burnt moutainside, which was still emitting heat, the village’s sheep were worst affected by the onslaught.

A wooden pen where the animals are kept during the winter was razed, as well as much of the grass they eat.

In contrast, the local children seemed to have recovered from their fear of the previous night and were playing with scraps of shrapnel, giggling as they scrambled in and out of a hole in the ground left by one of about 20 rockets that landed in the area.

“Look at these,” said Buya Showkat, a 13-year-old boy, holding out a handful of ball bearings.

The Mayor of Anishky, surveying his village of about 2,300 people, which sits off a winding road that leads up the Matin Mountains, just south of the Turkish border, gave a tired sigh. “In 15 years the Kurdish regional government has always protected this area and we never thought that Turkey would come and disturb our safety,” Anderias Shabo Barhe, 72, said.

He had slim hopes that the central Government in Baghdad would jump to the Kurdish people’s aid and send in the Iraqi Army to protect the land from a possible Turkish invasion.

“It is a contradiction. The Iraqi Government wants us to be the same country but at the same time it does not want to protect us,” he said. “Let us be independent and then we can protect ourselves against our enemies.

“What does it mean to be Iraqi?” he asked.

Baghdad is eager to keep Iraq unified under one government, fearing that the Kurdish north and the Shia south - both oil-rich regions with great long-term economic potential - could break away, leaving the centre of the country weak and without vital natural resources.

Iraq and the United States oppose any large-scale incursion by Turkey to take on the PKK, which Ankara blames for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the group began its armed struggle for an ethnic homeland in 1984.

They fear that such a move would destabilise one of the safest regions in Iraq.

Wahil, 49, a mechanic living in Anishky with his wife and three children, also hoped that there would be no escalation in the violence.

His is one of 27 families to flee to the village from Baghdad and the rest of Iraq, outside the Kurdish region, to escape the daily bombs and sectarian killings.

“Last night’s shelling is something that happened once and we hope that it will not be repeated,” he said, adding with a shrug: “We are from Baghdad so we are used to such attacks.”

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