Turkey staged retaliatory airstrikes against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq on Sunday as thousands of Turks attended rain-lashed funerals for 15 soldiers killed by the rebels in a cross-border attack from Iraq. Public anger mounted in Turkey at the inability of civilian leaders to stop attacks by the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. The group has waged a 24-year guerrilla war for greater autonomy for Turkey's minority Kurds from bases in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq.
Mourners booed President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at funerals Sunday for two of the soldiers killed near the border with Iraq on Friday.
Demonstrators elsewhere waved the country's flag in front of parliament and beat and burned effigies of the PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan.