Thursday, December 29, 2011

Turkish air strike kills 35 in north Iraq

Turkish warplanes launched air strikes against suspected Kurdish militants in northern Iraq near the Turkish border overnight, the military said today, but local officials said the attack killed 35 smugglers who were mistaken for guerrillas.

The Turkish military confirmed it had launched the strike after unmanned drones spotted suspected rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), but said there were no civilians in the area and it was investigating the incident.

"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," said Fehmi Yaman, mayor of Uludere in Sirnak province.

The pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) said in a statement that 35 people had been killed and party leaders were heading for the area. Joint chairman Selahattin Demirtas said the party announced a three-day period of mourning.

"It is clear there was a massacre. They will try to cover it up ... We will not allow them to cover it up," Turkish media reported Demirtas as saying. The BDP said it would hold demonstrations in Istanbul and elsewhere to protest the deaths.

The Turkish military said it had learnt that the PKK had sent many militants to the Sinat-Haftanin area, where the strikes occurred in northern Iraq, to retaliate after recent militant losses in clashes.

Military units were warned that PKK groups there were planning attacks on security force border posts in southeast Turkey, prompting the military to increase border surveillance.

"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 and they struck the target at 2137-2224 (1937-2024 GMT)," it said.

"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," it said.

"An administrative and legal investigation and procedures regarding the incident are continuing," it added.

The Turkish government, which has been battling the PKK since the group took up arms in 1984 to fight for an ethnic Kurdish homeland, was not immediately available for comment.