ANKARA, Turkey – Turkish warplanes bombed a Kurdish rebel hideout in northern Iraq on Monday – the third airstrike in as many days in retaliation for an attack that killed 15 soldiers.

The military said its warplanes bombed the Avasin Basyan region of northern Iraq after spotting a group of rebels.

Turkey stepped up its military activity after 15 soldiers and at least 23 insurgents were killed Friday in the fiercest battle between Turkish troops and Kurdish rebels in eight months.

Another 20 soldiers were wounded. Two soldiers are reported missing and are believed to be dead, the military has said.

Turkish fighter jets had struck suspected rebel hideouts in northern Iraq on Friday and Saturday. And Turkish artillery units pounded suspected rebel positions in the Avasin Basyan region Sunday, the military statement said.

In northern Iraq, a rebel spokesman said the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, had suffered no casualties in the latest attack.

“There are no PKK personnel here in this area that was bombed so we have no casualties among our fighters,” Ahmed Deniz said.

Deniz said the PKK was holding two dead bodies of Turkish soldiers killed by them in operations. The claim could not be verified independently.

The violence broke a period of relative calm that had lasted since February, when Turkey claimed to have killed hundreds of rebels in a ground offensive in northern Iraq.

Meanwhile, Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin said Monday the government was considering a military request for an increase in powers in combatting rebels. The military has said changes to Turkish anti-terrorism laws, pushed by the European Union, had crippled its ability to effectively fight the rebels and should be revoked while still safeguarding human rights.

“We are studying ways to make these changes without stepping back from neither security nor freedoms,” Sahin said.

Turkey's Parliament is scheduled to vote Wednesday on whether to extend by a year the military's authority to carry out operations in northern Iraq. The current mandate expires Oct. 17.

In other fighting, a village guard paid by the government to assist troops was killed in a clash with rebels in the Amanos mountains in southern Turkey on Sunday, the private Dogan news agency reported Monday.

The PKK has been fighting for autonomy in Turkey's southeast since 1984. The group is branded a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

The military said in a statement on its Web site that all planes involved in Monday's attack returned safely and said it took precautions to avoid civilian casualties.

The military has accused Iraqi Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq of providing the rebels shelter and support. But Deniz, the Kurdish rebel spokesman, said Monday that the Iraqi Kurdish administration in northern Iraq was not helping the rebel group.

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Associated Press writer Yahya Barzanji in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq contributed to this report.