Ankara - Turkish Air Force jets bombed a number of suspected Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq late Wednesday night and Thursday morning, the Turkish military confirmed.

In a short statement posted on its website, the Turkish General Staff said warplanes had bombed the banned Kurdish Workers'Party (PKK) positions in the Zap and Avasin-Basyan regions of northern Iraq.

According to the statement the airstrikes were successful and all planes had safely returned to their bases.

Washington, April 30 : Archaeologists have found an ancient temple in Turkey, filled with broken metal, ivory carvings, and stone slabs engraved with a dead language, which would cast new light on the “dark age” that was thought to have engulfed the region from 1200 to 900 B. C.

Written sources from the era, including the Old Testament of the Bible, Greek Homeric epics, and texts from Egyptian pharaoh Ramses III, record the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age as a turbulent period of cultural collapse, famine, and violence.

Ankara- A would-be suicide bomber failed to blow up former Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk in an attempted assassination attempt in Ankara on Wednesday, the Anadolu news agency reported. The woman, Didem Akman, was arrested at the Bilkent University after a detonator failed to trigger explosives she had strapped to her body.

"There was an explosion one metre behind me," Turk said. "My bodyguards subdued the attacker."

A second suspected suicide bomber was later arrested outside the university.

Ankara - Turkey on Monday started its first-ever joint military training exercise with neighbouring Syria, the Turkish General Staff confirmed to the German Presse Agency dpa.

The small-scale training exercises focussed on border protection and will last until Wednesday, said a spokesman for the General Staff.

Ankara - A high-ranking police officer and a civilian were killed in Istanbul Monday in a shootout between police and three members of a left-wing group that began after a police raided in Turkey's largest city early Monday. Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said the shootout started shortly after police raided an apartment block in the suburb of Bostanci on the Asian side of the city at about 5:30 am (0230 GMT).

Ankara - Seven police officers and a television cameraman were injured in Istanbul Monday in a shootout between police and three members of a left-wing group that began after police raided a number of houses in the Turkish city early Monday. Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said the raids started at 5:30 am (0230 GMT) and the shootout in the suburb of Bostanci on the Asian side of the city was continuing some five hours later.

Guler said the far-left group was planning a "sensational operation".

In a raid on a house in the suburb of Bagcilar, police seized weapons, ammunition and bomb-making materials