At least 2,000 people demonstrated late on Sunday in the northern town of Rania as the victims were buried, and 300 more marched silently from a bus station to a mosque in mourning on Monday, the town’s mayor said.
The protesters demanded an end to Ankara’s bombing campaign against Kurdish rebels, which began on Wednesday and claimed its first civilian casualties on Sunday.
“Turkish warplanes are shelling some areas of the Kurdistan region and as a result of shelling on Sunday, August 21, 2011, seven civilian citizens were martyred,” Kurdish president Masoud Barzani said in a statement.
“At this time I express my concern toward the martyring of those civilians and condemn (the shelling). I stress that the killing and harming of civilians is unjustified,” Barzani said. “We demand that such incidents not be repeated.”
Ankara launched the raids against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels on Wednesday after increased attacks in southeastern Turkey. The rebels have killed about 40 Turkish security personnel in just over a month.
The raids are the first against rebels in the mountains of northern Iraq in more than a year and are seen as an escalation of the 27-year-old conflict after the collapse of efforts for a negotiated settlement.
Both the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Arbil have condemned the attacks but they have gained little notice outside Iraq as the world focuses on the war in Libya and unrest in Syria.
Turkey has not confirmed Sunday’s strike.
The Firat news agency, which has close links to the rebels, reported the PKK as saying that three guerrillas had been killed in the Turkish air raids since the operation began.
Rania Mayor Barham Ahmed Hama Rasheed said Sunday’s victims were a family that once lived in his town and urged the United Nations to intervene to stop the shelling, calling the deaths “calamitous.”
“Among those killed there are three people who were under 18 years old, and there was a 3-month-old infant,” Rasheed said.
“People are angry and upset.”
Kardo Mohammed, a member of the Kurdish parliament, said the shelling constituted a breach of international conventions and agreements between the two countries.
“The Turkish shelling targeted civilians basically, and the proof is the killing of these seven civilians, including children,” Mohammed said. “We do not believe that the planes cannot differentiate between civilian and military, or a child and a fighter carrying a rifle.”
More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict since the PKK took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in 1984.
Turkish investors have poured into Iraq’s Kurdish region in recent years, building homes, offices and shopping malls.
Hawri Kawa, a civic activist in Rania, said: “The protesters were so angry about the Turkish shelling that they burned the Turkish flag.”