Iraqi Kurdish officials said around 300 Turkish troops crossed almost two miles into northern Iraq for the first time since Turkey's parliament in October authorized the army to carry out cross-border operations to hunt down Kurdistan Workers Party rebels.

A local Kurdish television said troops reached several villages on Iraqi soil, but the Iraqi Kurdish regional presidency announced by day's end that the troops had withdrawn without clashes. A Turkish military official, however, reported skirmishes with PKK fighters across the border.

Turkey's President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the army was doing "what is necessary" to fight the PKK, which Turkey labels as a terrorist organization.

Middle East analysts say the ground incursion may have been limited – and kept quiet – in order to test the limits of U.S. and European reactions in the only part of war-torn Iraq that enjoys relative peace.

If Western capitals react as mildly as they did with Sunday's air and artillery strikes on several villages along the Iraq-Turkey border, analysts say, Ankara might further expand its air and ground operations against PKK targets.

Sunday's bombing, the largest Turkish cross-border attack since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, left one Iraqi Kurdish woman dead and five other people injured. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said Tuesday that the air strikes damaged 10 villages and displaced 1,800 inhabitants.

To the dismay of the U.S.-backed Iraqi government and Iraqi Kurdish administration, the air strikes were apparently coordinated with U.S. forces and launched after they authorized the cross-border military strike. Turkish military leaders said the attacks came after Washington opened up the northern Iraqi airspace, tacitly giving Ankara a green light.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the United States was providing Turkey with intelligence information that helped the Turkish military target PKK bases in northern Iraq, including Sunday's attack.

The daily quoted Pentagon officials as saying that U.S. military personnel have set up a center in Ankara to share intelligence gathered from U.S. aircraft and unmanned drones flying over the mountainous region where Kurdish rebels are hiding out. One U.S. military official told the Washington Post the United States was "essentially handing them their targets," adding that the Turkish army then decides whether to act on the information and notifies the United States, which has 155,000 troops deployed in Iraq.

Iraqi repercussions of the U.S. support for the military operations appeared to run counter to America's diplomatic initiatives to promote its national reconciliation. A top Kurdish official in protest Tuesday snubbed U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during an unannounced visit to Iraq.

Massoud Barzani, president of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region, called off a planned trip to Baghdad to meet with Rice in order to protest the U.S. role in assisting the Turkish military, according to the region's prime minister, Nechirvan Barzani.

"It is unacceptable that the United States, in charge of monitoring our airspace, authorized Turkey to bomb our villages," he told reporters.

Nevertheless, Turkey is apparently indifferent to the Iraqi Kurdish anger, or even at the central Baghdad government's displeasure. So long as Turkey's military operations are supported by the major power-broker in Iraq, the United States, and so long as the European Union only expresses "concern" and calls on Ankara not to use "excessive force," the Turkish army is not likely be deterred from penetrating into northern Iraqi territories when it sees fit.

In addition to Turkey, the United States and European Union also regard the PKK as a terrorist organization.

Rice, whose visit to Iraq was overshadowed by the tension on the Turkish-Iraqi border, implicitly defended the Turkish cross-border operations by blaming the Kurdish rebels. She said in Baghdad the PKK was "threatening the stability in the north which clearly resulted in deaths in Turkey."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino also described the PKK as a threat to Turkey, Iraq, and the United States, confirming that Washington had urged Ankara to take "very targeted and limited" action against the rebels.

Ankara massed 100,000 troops along the Turkish-Iraqi border after a PKK ambush killed 12 soldiers in October, but held back on cross-border operations at Washington's request, drawing general disappointment at home.

But Turkish media reports indicated that this week's operations seem to have restored the army's domestic status as a powerful institution.

More than 37,000 people have been killed since 1984 when the group launched an armed campaign for self-rule in southeastern Turkey.