President Abdullah Gul is scheduled to attend one of the funerals to be held in the western city of Eskisehir while Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Trade Minister Kursad Tuzmen will participate in ceremonies in the central city of Kirikkale and Mersin province in the south, respectively.

Dozens of mourners attended the first funeral of the day in the southeastern city of Siirt, waving Turkish flags and shouting slogans against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) blamed for the attack, the Anatolia news agency said.

"Damn the PKK, the martyrs are immortal," roared the crowd.

There were emotional scenes in Diyarbakir, the main city in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast, where one of the soldiers was buried late Saturday with weeping relatives condemning the violence, the CNN-Turk news channel reported.

Funerals will also be held in nine other provinces later Sunday.

The soldiers were killed Friday when PKK rebels attacked a border post under cover of heavy weapons fire from neighbouring northern Iraq, killing 15 soldiers.

Twenty-three rebels were killed in the ensuing fighting during which Turkish forces responded with artillery fire and attack helicopters to pound rebel positions.

Artillery units and fighter jets also struck a group of rebels across the border in Iraq, about 10 kilometers (six miles) from the station which was attacked, the army said Saturday.

The fighting, the bloodiest this year, prompted calls for Ankara to hit back at the militants who use the Kurdish-run autonomous north of Iraq as a springboard for attacks on Turkish targets across the border.

After emergency talks in Ankara late Saturday, civilian and military leaders vowed to destroy the PKK, considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

"Our struggle against terrorism will be pursued under all conditions and above all other concerns through effective cooperation between state bodies and every measure will be implemented with determination," they said in a statement.

The foreign ministry has called on Baghdad to catch the perpetrators of the attack and curb the rebels operating out of its territory while Gul urged his Iraqi counterpart Jalal Talabani to take the necessary action against what he called an "international act of terrorism".

"We are investigating how this treacherous attack took place, who facilitated it. These will be followed up on and everyone will be held to account," Gul said in a video message.

Friday's attack came just before the Turkish parliament was set to vote on extending by one year the government's mandate to order military strikes against PKK bases in northern Iraq.

Under a one-year parliamentary authorisation obtained last October, the army has carried out several air strikes and a week-long ground incursion against PKK targets, using intelligence passed on by NATO ally United States.

The current authorisation expires on October 17 and lawmakers are expected to vote on extending the mandate in the coming weeks.

The PKK has been fighting for a separate state in the mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey since 1984, in a bloody conflict that has claimed some 44,000 thousand lives.