Turkish warplanes kill tobacco smugglers

Turkish warplanes have killed 35 civilian smugglers in northern Iraq after mistaking them for Kurdish militants, Ankara’s ruling party said yesterday, promising not to allow a cover-up of an incident that threatens to wreck relations with minority Kurds.

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 southeast.

The Turkish military had said its planes launched airstrikes overnight yesterday after drones spotted suspected rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The military had denied there were civilians in the area.

However, ruling AK Party spokesman Huseyin Celik said initial reports from local government officials had found the victims were not militants and that most of the dead were cigarette smugglers.

“It has been determined from initial reports that these people were smugglers, not terrorists,” Mr Celik told a news conference, calling the incident “saddening”.

“If mistakes were made, if there were flaws and if there were shortcomings in the incident that took place, by no means will these be covered up.”

“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 said its leaders were heading for the area and that it would hold demonstrations in Istanbul to protest.