The number of foreign visitors to Turkey rose 25.6 percent year-on-year in October to 2.15 million, the Turkish Statistics Institute said on Wednesday.

In the first 10 months of the year, the number rose 18.3 percent to 21.1 million, the institute said.

Tourism, an important source of foreign earnings for Turkey which has a large current account deficit, rebounded this year after it was hit in 2006 by an outbreak of bird flu and a series of bomb attacks.

Visitor numbers have continued to show strong growth despite an escalation of separatist violence in Turkey and a threat from Ankara to carry out a cross-border operation into northern Iraq to deal with Kurdistan Workers Party guerrillas based there.

But income from tourism has grown more slowly than visitor numbers. In the third quarter revenues rose 8.6 percent year-on-year to $8.7 billion, after 1 percent growth in the second quarter.