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| The Grand Turk | |
| Erdogan regrets deadly strike on Kurd 'smugglers' | |
| 2011-12-31 | |
| GULYAZI, Turkey: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed regret Friday for the killing of 35 Kurdish civilians in an airstrike as mourners vented their fury and rebels called for an uprising. As locals buried their dead, Erdogan admitted that the victims of Wednesday night's attack near the Iraqi border were smugglers and not separatist rebels as the army had originally claimed. Speaking to journalists in Istanbul, Erdogan voiced his regret for what he called an "unfortunate and distressing" incident. "Images transmitted by drones showed a group of 40 people in the area, it was impossible to say who they were," he said.
Turkish rights groups called for a UN-sponsored investigation into the killing. "The incident requires a detailed investigation, but it is an execution without due process, and carries the characteristics of a mass murder in terms of the number of victims," human rights groups IHD and Mazlumder said in a preliminary report into Wednesday's airstrike. "Turkish and international nongovernmental organizations should investigate the incident and the UN Human Rights Committee should send a committee right away," the groups said. Erdogan's government has promised not to allow a cover-up of the incident. "We are waiting for the investigation results. We will share its results with the public," Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc told reporters on Friday. "These incidents can take place in the process of the fight against terror." In their report, IHD and Mazlumder quoted 19-year-old Haci Encu, who survived the attack and was in hospital, as saying the smugglers were a group of about 40 to 50 people with mules and were attacked by drones when they were crossing the border to Iraq. "We were going for sugar and diesel. We even heard the drone, but we kept on walking because it's our ordinary route," Encu is quoted as saying. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |