ANKARA, June 17 (Reuters) - The Turkish military said on Tuesday it had opened fire on 21 Kurdish PKK fighters trying to enter Turkey from northern Iraq.

The General Staff, in a statement on its internet site, said its forces opened fire on the guerrillas late on Monday 3 km (2 miles) inside northern Iraq and most of them had been "neutralised".

It gave no further details, but "neutralised" generally means killed.

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) uses northern Iraq as a base to stage attacks on Turkish territory. Turkey blames the PKK, which is fighting for an ethnic homeland in southeastern Turkey, for the deaths of 40,000 people.

Turkey, like the European Union and the United States, considers the group a terrorist organisation. (Writing by Paul de Bendern; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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