The prospect of Turkey invading northern Iraq drew closer today after Kurdish rebels killed at least 12 soldiers in an ambush, blowing up a bridge near the Iraqi border as a military convoy crossed.

The Turkish Prime Minister flew back to Ankara for an emergency summit with military leaders after the attack, in which another 16 troops were injured in heavy fighting and, according to unconfirmed reports, a further 10 were missing, believed kidnapped. In a separate incident in the same province today at least 17 people were injured when a mine blew up a wedding convoy.

The provocative upsurge in violence comes days after the Turkish Parliament gave the authorisation to press ahead with a threatened cross-border military incursion into Iraq, despite warnings from Washington and Brussels.

Turkey blames US and Iraqi authorities for failing to clamp down on the activities of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been using its guerilla bases in the mountains of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq to mount increasingly intense attacks on Turkish targets in recent weeks.

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A full-scale invasion would make no military sense. It would also be politically disastrous

Michael Evans, Defence Editor

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“We are determined to respond to these events in a level-headed manner. What must be done will be done…We are not giving any thought to what others might say,” Mr Erdogan said as he prepared to fly to the capital, Ankara, to join President Abdullah Gul and senior officials for the summit. “We are very angry at the moment.”

Turkey’s Government is under strong public and military pressure to take action against the PKK in northern Iraq. There are reportedly between 60,000 and 100,000 troops deployed along the border to try to stop the rebels crossing back into Turkey. Mr Erdogan has already ordered plans for some sort of cross-border action days after 13 Turkish troops were killed in an overnight ambush earlier this month. That ambush sparked nationwide condemnation as the soldiers’ funerals turned into marches demanding retaliation.

Turkey’s Nato ally, the United States, and the Baghdad government are worried about the prospect of Turkish troops destabilising the only relatively peaceful part of the country. But anger at a recent US congressional vote to blame Ottoman Turks for genocide against Armenians in World War One has deafened Turkish ears to calls for calm from Washington.

Western diplomats and analysts, however, believe Turkey is reluctant to go ahead with an operation that would cause diplomatic and economic headaches. According to Mr Erdogan, Turkey has mounted 24 previous cross-border incursions with little lasting effect.

The Turkish General staff said in a statement that 23 guerrillas were killed during the overnight attack on a military convoy in the border region of Hakkari’s Daglarca district. The statement said 63 ‘targets’ were under heavy fire as clashes continued into the day, and an air-backed military operation was launched in the area.

The PKK claimed that it had had the upper hand in the fighting. "There were clashes between the two sides. We killed a large number of them. We took a group of Turkish soldiers as prisoners,” said Abdul Rahman al-Chadirchi, a leading member of the PKK.

Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi President and himself a Kurd, warned Ankara that it's demands that Iraq should flush out the PKK were unrealistic. Iraq's armed forces would be unable to impose its will on the Kurdish separatists in the north where the might of the large and well-equipped Turkish army had failed, he said.

Massoud Barzani, the President of the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, warned meanwhile that if Turkey moved in, the Kurdistan regional government would be compelled to defend its people.

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