(Adds more quotes from Kurdish official)

By Shamal Aqrawi

ARBIL, Iraq, Feb 21 (Reuters) - The Turkish military shelled Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq on Thursday, Kurdish officials said, days after Ankara said it was weighing a ground operation against the guerrillas.

A senior Iraqi border official said a bridge had been destroyed in Nerva Rikan, an area close to Iraq's border with Turkey in Dahuk province.

Fouad Hussein, head of the office of the president of Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdistan region, said there had also been a clash between Kurdish Peshmerga security forces and Turkish troops in the region.

But a spokesman for the Peshmerga forces as well as Turkey's military denied there had been any battle between Turkish troops and Peshmerga soldiers.

"There were no clashes between the Peshmerga and Turkish forces," said Jabbar Yawar, a spokesman for the Peshmerga.

The office of the Turkish military's Chief of General Staff, in a statement posted on its Web site, also said: "These news (reports) are completely untrue and are produced in order to mislead the public opinion."

TURKISH BASES IN IRAQ

Hussein said the clash occurred when Turkish troops tried to move tanks from a base that has long been inside northern Iraq.

The senior border guard official, who also said there was no clash, said Peshmerga forces had told them to stay in the compound.

Turkey has kept small contingents of troops at several bases in northern Iraq since offensives in the 1990s.

Asked later by Reuters to give more details on what had happened between Turkish and Peshmerga forces, Hussein said:

"The tense situation is now under control with regards to the Turkish forces at their base in the area. The Turkish tanks that tried to leave have returned to their bases."

He declined to give further details.

Turkey has massed tens of thousands of troops along its frontier with Iraq and has carried out several small-scale cross-border commando operations and aerial bombing raids against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

NATO member Turkey says it has the right under international law to hit PKK rebels who take shelter in northern Iraq and have mounted attacks inside Turkey that have killed scores of troops in recent months.

Yawar said the Turkish military had shelled several Kurdish rebel positions in a remote, mountainous area.

"They started heavy artillery shelling at about 11 a.m. (0800 GMT). The area was deserted except for some PKK members," Yawar told Reuters.

Turkish planes then later staged attacks near Amadiya, close to the Turkish border in Dahuk province, for three hours but it was not clear what the targets were.

"We don't know if the Turkish army has come in or not but after the shelling we heard gunfire," he said. "We think that was between the Turkish army and the PKK but we aren't sure."

He said there were no casualties reported.

Ankara said on Tuesday that Turkey was considering a ground operation against the Kurdish rebels, which it blames for the deaths of nearly 40,000 people since the group launched its struggle for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. (Additional reporting by Paul de Bendern and Selcuk Gokoluk in Ankara and Tim Cocks and Mohammed Abbas in Baghdad; writing by Michael Holden and Dean Yates; editing by Andrew Roche)

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