(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-11-04 16:51

ANKARA -- Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants on Sunday released eight Turkish soldiers they kidnapped last month, Turkey's NTV television reported.

Iraqi Kurdish officials confirmed that the soldiers, who were captured by PKK militants in an ambush inside Turkey, were handed over to them and would be sent back to Turkey late Sunday, the NTV reported.

The release came before Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to meet US President George W. Bush on Monday in Washington to discuss a possible cross-border military operation against the PKK.

Turkey has massed up to 100,000 troops along the mountainous border with Iraq in preparations for a cross-border offensive, approved by parliament earlier this month, to crush about 3,000-strong PKK rebels.

The PKK, listed by the US and Turkey as a terrorist group, took up arms against Turkey in 1984, seeking to create an ethnic homeland in the southeast part of the country. More than 30,000 people have been killed in more than two decades of conflict.