SULAIMANIYA, Iraq - Turkish warplanes attacked northern Iraq on Monday, Iraqi security officials said on Tuesday, bombing a mountainous area that is home to rebel Kurdish separatists.

Jabbar Yawar, spokesman for Peshmerga security forces in Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdistan region, said the warplanes struck an area near Nerwa Wa Rekan, a village in the northern province of Dahuk. There were no reports of any casualties.

An Iraqi border guard said it was an artillery attack, not a bombing by airplanes.

The Turkish military has regularly attacked rebel positions of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the mountains of northern Iraq, where several thousand militants are believed to be holed up.

The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984 with the aim of establishing an ethnic homeland in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey. Some 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. (Reporting by Sherko Raouf in Sulaimaniya)