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Turkey Kurdish Rebels Airstrike: Officials Claim Many Killed Mistaken For Guerillas
Turkey Kurdish Rebels Airstrike: Officials Claim Many Killed Mistaken For Guerillas
ANKARA, Turkey A Turkish official has confirmed that 35 people killed in Turkish air strikes in Iraq are civilians working as smugglers whom the military mistook for Kurdish rebels.
Ruling party spokesman Huseyin Celik says Thursday the victims "were not terrorists" but people smuggling cigarettes into Turkey from Iraq.
Celik says officials are investigating possible intelligence failures that led to the strikes.
He expressed regret for the deaths and suggested the government would compensate the victims.
Earlier, the military said its jets had struck an area of northern Iraq frequently used by the rebels to enter Turkey after drones detected a group approaching the border.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) Turkey's air force attacked suspected Kurdish rebel targets across the border in Iraq, the military said Thursday, but Kurdish officials claimed many of the roughly 35 people killed were teenage smugglers mistaken for guerrillas.
If that allegation is true, it would be one of the largest one-day civilian death tolls incurred during the military's 27-year-old drive against rebels, who are fighting Turkey for autonomy in the mostly Kurdish southeast. It also is the latest example of how the government's efforts to grant cultural and other rights to aggrieved Kurds have been eclipsed by escalating violence this year.
The Turkish military confirmed the Wednesday night raids, saying its jets struck an area of northern Iraq frequently used by the rebels to enter Turkey after drones detected a group approaching the often unmarked mountainous border. It said an inquiry has been launched, but did not say whether there were casualties.
The governor's office for the province of Sirnak which borders Iraq said 35 people were killed and one person was injured in the aerial operation.
Pro-Kurdish legislator Nazmi Gur said most of those killed were teenagers who were carrying diesel fuel from Iraq into Turkey on donkeys or horses often the only livelihood in local villages. He claimed that officials would have known that Turkish smugglers would be operating in the area.
Video footage provided by the Dogan agency Thursday morning showed mourners, some crying, as they surrounded dozens of bodies that lay side-by-side and wrapped in blankets in the Turkish village of Ortasu.
Border troops had been placed on alert following intelligence indicating that Kurdish rebels were preparing attacks in retaliation for a series of recent military assaults on the guerrillas, the military said. It said drones had detected a group approaching Turkey, apparently at a mountain pass that the rebels have used to smuggle weapons into Turkey, and that the military conducted strikes in areas where the rebels have bases far away from civilian settlements.
Ahmet Deniz, a spokesman for the rebel group, put the number of dead at 28. He said they were among a group of about 50 people who were attacked on their way back to Turkey from Iraq's self-ruled northern Kurdish region. Most of the survivors were injured, he said.
"Those who were killed yesterday had no links to PKK. They were only smugglers who were on their way back to Turkey from Iraq," Deniz said, referring to the Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers' Party.
Turkey Kurdish Rebels Airstrike: Officials Claim Many Killed Mistaken For Guerillas