ANKARA, Feb 27: Turkey stepped up its offensive against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq on Wednesday and refused to set a pull-out timetable, despite a US warning that the incursion should last no more than “a week or two.” The military said 77 members of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were killed overnight in what they called the heaviest clashes since its forces rolled over the border into the snow-bound mountains of northern Iraq last week.

That brought the army toll of PKK dead to 230, while its own losses climbed to 27 with the deaths since Tuesday evening of five soldiers and three government-armed Turkish Kurd “village guard” militiamen, the general staff said.

As fighter jets continued to pound rebel positions on the sixth full day of the incursion, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates made it clear that US support for its Nato ally was not open-ended.

The offensive must end quickly, he said.

“I measure quick in terms of days, or a week or two, something like that.

Not months,” he said in New Delhi before flying to Ankara for talks.

But a senior Turkish official said the operation would continue until the PKK is uprooted from the region, which it uses a springboard for attacks in Turkey.

“There will be no timetable to withdraw Turkish troops... until the presence of the terrorist organisation is eliminated,” said Ahmet Davutoglu, chief foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Davutoglu, accompanied by two other officials, was dispatched to Baghdad as Ankara sought to allay mounting Iraqi protests over the incursion.—AFP