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| The Grand Turk |
| Turkish air strike kills 35 Kurdish smugglers |
| 2011-12-29 |
| The Turkish military killed at least 35 people in an air strike near the country's border with Iraq, after apparently mistaking smugglers for Kurdish militants. Turkish warplanes strike suspected militants regularly in their battle against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas, and have stepped up raids after a PKK attack in August. Fehmi Yaman, mayor of Uludere in Sirnak province, said "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." The pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) released a statement saying 35 people had been killed, adding that party leaders were heading for the area. A Turkish 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," he said. Images on television showed a line of corpses covered by blankets on a hillside, with many people gathered around, some sobbing with their head in their hands. People loaded the corpses onto donkeys which were led down the hillside to be loaded into vehicles to be taken to a local hospital. |
| Posted by:ryuge |