Turkey's president, prime minister and general staff expressed profound regret and deepest condolences Friday over the airstrike that killed 35 Turkish civilians, mistaken for Kurdish rebels, DPA reported.
"Our grief is great," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters. President Abdullah Gul said the strike had been "an unintended, unfortunate and saddening incident."
Two Turkish F-16 fighter-bombers blasted a group of some 40 people crossing the Iraqi-Turkish border late on Wednesday night, acting on information they were guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. But in fact the people were smugglers of cigarettes and diesel fuel who were returning to their village in the southeastern province of Sirnak.
The statements came hours after the leader of the opposition, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, attacked the cabinet for its silence over what a ruling party official had already termed "an unfortunate operational accident."
"The government should immediately apologize. Where did they get this intelligence?" Kılıçdaroglu told reporters on Friday morning, more than 24 hours after the airstrike.
"May God's mercy be upon those who lost their lives," President Gul told reporters after attending Friday prayers in Istanbul. "I would like to convey my condolences to their families."
Prime Minister Erdogan said the state was used to small groups of smugglers crossing the border in that area, but on Wednesday night there was a large group, and this had strengthened the military's suspicion that they were "terrorists".
The general staff issued a statement on its website, saying: "We wish God's mercy on our citizens who lost their lives in the incident that took place on the night of Dec 28, 2011, and we also convey our condolences to their families."
It was the second statement in 24 hours that the Turkish Armed Forces had issued about the airstrike. In Thursday's statement, the military said the strike was ordered after it received intelligence from "various sources" that PKK members were preparing to cross into Sirnak and a group of people was seen advancing towards the border.
Leaders of the Kurdish nationalist party, or BDP, have called the airstrike a "massacre" and a "crime against humanity". Kurds in Istanbul and Diyarbakir staged protests over the incident on Thursday.
Sirnak hospital staff conducted autopsies on the 35 corpses on Friday morning, Turkish media reported. A mass funeral was scheduled to take place Friday afternoon in Uludere, the home village of the victims.