Turkey says deadly air strike was an 'unfortunate accident'

Turkish official confirms 35 people killed in Iraqi border air raids were civilians working as smugglers, not Kurdish rebels

Turkey's ruling party has called the killing of 35 people in an air attack along its south-eastern border an "unfortunate operational accident".

The deputy chairman of the governing Justice and Development party Hüseyin Çelik said the victims were not Kurdish militants, as some initially suspected, but people smuggling cigarettes across the border.

Expressing his sorrow and offering condolences to families of those killed, he said: "If there is a mistake or negligence, it will be found out."

Çelik dismissed claims the bombing of civilians had been intentional. "Such malicious claims are untrue and should be disregarded," the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported him as saying.

Officials were investigating possible intelligence failures that led to the strike and suggested the government might compensate families. The announcement came after mounting anger within Turkey at the deaths which had been quickly asserted by Kurdish sympathisers to have involved young people smuggling goods across the border.

The air strike on Wednesday night was launched after unmanned drones spotted a group of people moving in the area and occurred in a region where guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) are regularly attacked by Turkish forces.

"We have 30 corpses, all of them are burned. The state knew that these people were smuggling in the region. This kind of incident is unacceptable. They were hit from the air," Fehmi Yaman, the mayor of Uludere, in Sirnak province, told Reuters.

Sirnak's governor, Vahdettin Ozkan, said at least 20 people were killed in the attack, adding that a statement would be issued later.

Pro-Kurdish legislator Nazmi Gur said at least 35 people died, most of whom were teenagers carrying diesel from Iraq into Turkey on donkeys or horses. Gur said the diesel trade was often the region's only livelihood in such villages and officials would have known smugglers would be in the area.

The pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy party (BDP) said its leaders were heading for the area and announced a three-day period of mourning. It also promised demonstrations, including in Istanbul.

Hurriyet quoted BDP joint chairman Selahattin Demirtas as saying the killings were "clearly a massacre". A group of 50 smugglers had crossed the border into Turkey and were stopped and redirected by soldiers from a nearby outpost right before they reached their village, Demirtas said.

"The air strike happened on that route they were directed to. Those killed were young people who made a living off of smuggling. There were people studying for university exams among them and the soldiers at the outpost knew it."

A security official said: "There were rumours that the PKK would cross through this region. Images were recorded of a crowd crossing last night, hence an operation was carried out. We could not have known whether these people were (PKK) group members or smugglers."

The Turkish military said the strike had been against PKK forces in northern Iraq."It was established from unmanned aerial vehicle images that a group was within Iraq heading towards our border," it said. "Given that the area in which the group was spotted is often used by terrorists and that it was moving towards our border at night, it was deemed necessary for our air force planes to attack.

"The place where the incident occurred is the Sinat-Haftanin area in northern Iraq where there is no civilian settlement and where the main camps of the separatist terrorist group are located," the air force said in a statement. Investigations into the incident were continuing.

Television images showed bodies on a hillside covered by blankets, with people gathered around, some with heads in their hands and crying. Donkeys carried corpses which were then loaded into vehicles to be taken to hospital. Security sources told the media those killed were carrying canisters of diesel on mules and their bodies were found on the Iraqi side of the border. They said those killed were from Uludere on the Turkish side of the border on a regular smuggling route.

The Firat news agency, which has close ties to the PKK, said 17 people were still believed to be missing. Those killed were aged about 17-20.

In northern Iraq, PKK spokesman Ahmet Deniz condemned the strike and said F-16 jets had bombed a group of around 50 people taking goods across the border

The PKK killed 24 Turkish soldiers in raids on military outposts in August, prompting air and ground strikes in retaliation. More than 40,000 people are thought to have been killed since the conflict began in 1984.