Turkish troops pulled out of northern Iraq yesterday after a controversial week-long military offensive aimed at dealing a physical and psychological blow against separatist Kurdish rebel hideouts based across the border.

The army said it had killed 237 militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and destroyed nearly 300 shelters. Many rebels had been driven from the region and communications had been disrupted. “It has been concluded that the operation met the targets it set at the beginning,” the army said. It added that 27 members of the Turkish security forces had also died.

The announcement came a day after President Bush urged Turkey, its Nato ally, to end the incursion, but the military statement said the start and end dates had been set by the general staff without any outside influence.

While the impact on the PKK's future operations may be difficult to quantify, Turkey's first cross-border incursion in more than a decade will have served the symbolic purpose of showing the PKK, a hostile Iraqi Kurdish administration and a belligerent Turkish public that it is able to launch such attacks with apparent impunity even in US-backed Iraq.

“Doubtless there is no question of rendering the terrorist group completely ineffective in an operation taking place in this region. But it has been shown that the north of Iraq is not an area that is safe for terrorists,” the military statement said.

The operation, which began on February 21, began after months of air strikes mounted with the help of US intelligence. While the United States was quick to urge an end to the ground attack, the tenor of its criticism and the nature of the preparations led Turkish analysts to believe that a limited operation was more than condoned by Washington and aimed in part at demonstrating to both the PKK and Massoud Barzani's Iraqi Kurdish Government that they could not hide behind the new status of Iraq.

Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said: “There is one thing that remains clear, and that is the United States, Turkey, and Iraq all will continue to view the PKK as a terrorist organisation that needs to be dealt with.”

The PKK —- classified as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the US and the European Union — claimed that the troops withdrew after meeting fierce resistance.

Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi Foreign Minister who is a Kurd, welcomed the withdrawal, which Iraq said violated its sovereignty.

Turkey stepped up its perennial threats for an operation into northern Iraq after two deadly cross-border PKK ambushes on conscripts serving in Turkey. Despite strong pressure at home, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, held off mounting any attack until he had apparently secured the support of Washington, which Ankara has long criticised for failing to act in Iraq against a separatist group which it blames for more than 40,000 deaths since 1984.

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