Kurdish rebels on Sunday released eight Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq two weeks after capturing them in an ambush inside Turkey, Kurdish government and insurgent leaders said.The release came before Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan meets President Bush on Monday in Washington to agree on measures against the rebels, and avert a cross-border offensive against the Kurdish rebel group.
A spokesman for the group that captured the soldiers, the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, told The Associated Press by telephone that the eight were released Sunday morning near the border between Turkey and the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq's north. "The eight were freed this morning at 7:30 and handed over to Iraqi Kurdish officials in the mountains," said Abdul-Rahman Chadarchi, a PKK spokesman.
The soldiers were taken in an Oct. 21 ambush inside Turkish territory. The ambush also left 12 soldiers dead and raised pressure on Turkey's government to stage a cross-border offensive to fight Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq.