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ANKARA - Turkey said dozens of its warplanes bombed Kurdish rebel targets as deep as 95 kilometres inside northern Iraq for three hours Sunday, the largest aerial attack in years against the outlawed separatist group. Turkey's military chief said the U.S. gave intelligence and tacit approval for the raid.

An Iraqi official said the planes attacked several villages, killing one woman. The rebels said two civilians and five rebels were killed.

In the nighttime offensive, the fighter jets hit rebel positions close to the border with Turkey and in the Qandil mountains, which straddle the Iraq-Iran border, the Turkish military said in a statement posted on its website. It said the operation was directed against the rebels and not against the local population.

As many as 50 fighter jets were involved in the airstrikes, private NTV television and other media reported. Turkey has recently attacked the area with ground-based artillery and helicopters and there have been some unconfirmed reports of airstrikes by warplanes.

The attack came a month after the United States promised to share intelligence with Turkey about the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Turkey's military chief, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, said U.S. intelligence was used.

"America gave intelligence," Kanal D television quoted Buyukanit as saying. "But more importantly, America last night opened (the Iraqi) airspace to us. By opening the airspace, America gave its approval to this operation," he said.

"Even if it's winter, even if there's snow, even if they live in caves, we'll find them and hit them," he added, according to the report. "These operations will continue all the time."

Journalists were barred from entering the stricken areas, but some managed to sneak into the small village of Qlatooka, in Qandil, where bombs had destroyed a school and some homes.

Mukhlis Khadar, 44, said he and his family were woken by the raids and fled their home as soon as the school was hit.

"We left an unbelievable scene behind us," Khadar said. "When we climbed the rocks of the nearby mountain ... we saw flames of fire burning our village. ... Our house disappeared."

Saoqo Mohammad, a 30-year-old woman said: "We are civilians, with no arms or any relation to the PKK, why do they allow such horrible acts against civilians?"

Jamal Abdullah, a spokesman for the regional government of Iraqi Kurdistan, told AP Television News: "We call on the Turkish army to differentiate between the PKK and the ordinary people. We don't want the conflict between the Turkish troops and the PKK to turn into a conflict between the Turkish forces and the people of Kurdistan."

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan lauded the operation and suggested Turkey could stage more attacks on PKK hide-outs in northern Iraq.

"This operation, which was carried out under night conditions, was a success," Erdogan said Sunday. "Our struggle (against the PKK) will continue inside and outside Turkey with the same determination."

The pro-Kurdish news agency Firat, citing the PKK, said two civilians and five PKK rebels were killed. The airstrikes destroyed two schools and a hospital, it said, adding that the hospital had been vacated in anticipation of a Turkish attack.

The Kurdish rebels also said they responded to Turkish raids with anti-aircraft artillery units, Firat reported.

In Iraq, Mohammad Hajj Hammoud, a Foreign Ministry undersecretary, summoned the Turkish ambassador in Baghdad and asked that Ankara end raids "that cause harm to innocent people and affect friendly bilateral relations," the ministry said on its Web site.

The ministry said the raids killed one woman, injured four people and displaced several families.

The PKK has been fighting for autonomy in the predominantly Kurdish southeast for more than two decades. There has been intense public pressure on the Turkish government to attack rebel bases across the border as rebel attacks have increased in recent months.

Turkey has massed tens of thousands of troops along its border with northern Iraq in response to a series of attacks by the PKK rebels. In October, parliament voted in favor of authorizing the government to order a cross-border operation against the group.

Turkish forces have periodically shelled across the Iraqi border, and have sometimes carried out "hot pursuits" -- limited raids on the Iraqi side that sometimes last only a few hours.

The United States and Iraq have, however, called on Turkey to avoid a major operation, fearing such an offensive could disrupt one of the most tranquil regions in Iraq.

Harsh winter conditions in the rugged terrain of northern Iraq reduce the possibility of a large-scale ground offensive, making more airstrikes against the PKK likelier than attacks using tanks or helicopters. Limited and precise air raids are also less likely to hurt Turkey's alliance with the U.S. and Europe or to affect global oil prices than a protracted land battle.

Turkish news reports said a PKK command center in Qandil was hit.

The mountain is a base for the PKK's leadership council and the group has a network of camps around the mountain. But news reports in the past weeks have suggested that PKK fighters may have dispersed from camps in northern Iraq, worried about a possible attack from Turkey.

Abdullah Ibrahim, a senior official in the Iraqi administrative center of Sangasar, said Turkish warplanes bombarded 10 Kurdish villages, killing one woman and injuring two others. He acknowledged that there were Kurdish rebel bases in the area, but said they were far from the villages that were hit.

"The villagers are now scared and are hiding in nearby caves. They lost all their properties," Ibrahim said.