Bodies are mounted on to mules after the attack by Turkey's air force near the Turkish village of Ortasu. Photograph: AP
The donkeys had been sent across Turkey's south-eastern border with Iraq to ferry vats of smuggled diesel and cigarettes. On Thursday when they came back it was with bodies wrapped in carpets lashed to their sides: the victims of a Turkish air raid that killed up to 35 villagers from this remote region.
In a major embarrassment for Turkey's government, it was forced on Thursday to admit that the dead, originally described by the Turkish army as Kurdish separatist fighters from the banned PKK, were civilians, misidentified by Turkish drones and then bombed on Wednesday evening as they travelled close to the Iraqi border.
A Turkish ruling party spokesman, Huseyin Celik, said the victims "were not terrorists" but smugglers, adding that officials were investigating possible intelligence failures that led to the strikes. He expressed regret for the deaths and suggested the government would compensate the victims.
Television footage shot in the aftermath of the air strike showed mourning mountain villagers, some weeping, ferrying several dozen bodies away from the scene of the attack in trucks. Other images showed a line of corpses covered by blankets on a snow-covered hillside, with a crowd of people gathered around, some with their heads in their hands, crying.
According to local accounts, a group of people from the villages of Ortasu and Gulyazi were crossing the border from northern Iraq when they were blocked by soldiers on the path and then bombed at around 9.30pm on Wednesday.
The attack, which Turkey's largest pro-Kurdish party called a "crime against humanity", sparked clashes between hundreds of stone-throwing protesters and police in Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey's restive mainly Kurdish south-east. Police responded by firing water cannon and teargas at the demonstrators. Seven people were detained. One police officer was hurt after being hit by a stone, witnesses said.
Turkish air strikes kill dozens of villagers near Iraq border | World news | The Guardian