The weeping mourners accompanied the coffins of victims of Thursday's strike to the cemetery in Gulyazi village, near the Iraqi border, from the nearby town of Uludere where a service was held at the mosque.

The coffins were brought in a long convoy of cars and ambulances, sounding their horns as mourners flashed defiant V for victory signs.

"Erdogan is a murderer," the crowd chanted.

"He was a sapling, we could not plant him," cried the mother of 13-year-old Vedat Encu.

"I want to tell the head of the general staff that my son is a martyr and he didn't have any kind of weapons," Encu's father screamed as the body was transferred to the grave.

Erdogan on Friday offered his condolences to the families of the victims 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. "Afterwards it was determined they were smugglers transporting cigarettes and fuel on mules."

In his first reaction to the strike by Turkish air force F-16s on the border with Iraq late Wednesday, the prime minister said that "no state deliberately bombs its own people."

He said that separatist rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) had used the same route and methods to bring weapons into Turkey to mount attacks, and called for critics to await the result of an official inquiry.

But mourners on Friday rubbished that argument.

"It is impossible to kill them mistakenly. The pilots were 150 metres (500 feet) up and had a bird's eye view," said 20-year-old Mehmet from Ortasu village, near the site of the raid.

Mehmet, who also makes his living by smuggling goods from the border, said: "I could have been one of the (victims)."

A young woman whose cousin died in the bombing was in tears.

"This was no mistake. They intentionally killed people, who were trying to earn a crust," she said.

The PKK took up arms in Kurdish-majority southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives. It is labelled a terrorist organisation by Ankara and much of the international community.