Kitan Encu's eyes welled with tears as she recounted Thursday how she had to identify the bodies of Kurdish relatives killed in a Turkish air strike that may have been a military "blunder".

"They openly massacred us. Why was this blood spilled? They must answer this question," said Encu, who lost 11 family members in Wednesday night's air raid on the Turkey-Iraq border that left a total of 35 Kurds dead.

The army said it was targeting Kurdish rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) across the border in northern Iraq but Kurdish officials said the dead were all Kurdish villagers involved in cross-border smuggling and a senior official from Turkey's governing party has admitted it may have been a mistake.

"I saw the bodies to identify them. They were all burned, completely. They were in pieces," Encu said as she sat by the bedside of her 75-year-old mother in the State Hospital of Uludere in southeastern Turkey.

"The oldest one was 20 years old, they were all students," the 33-year-old said.

In the basement of the hospital where the victims of the strike were brought, the body of one of her relatives -- wrapped in a black nylon bag -- was placed in a wooden coffin by medical staff.

The staff had to shove their way through a crowd of mourning Kurds as they carried Salih Encu's body out of a makeshift autopsy room at the only hospital in the town, while another group brought in a new body covered in blankets and tied up with scraps of clothing.

The hospital in Uludere, which lies just 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the border with Iraq, was crowded with families of the dead and local villagers, waiting for doctors to finish the autopsies on their loved ones.

Outside, locals waiting for news gathered around bonfires trying to keep warm as temperatures hit freezing levels on Thursday night.

Doctors divided the basement with screens to make an autopsy room, while blankets used to cover the bodies before they arrived to hospital was piled up at one corner, with blood spots on them.

"I am father of a martyr," said one 50-year-old man, consoling his wife after the news that their son was among the victims.

"Mehmet Ali Tosun was his name. He was 23 years old," he said, declining to give his own name.

"He was unemployed. As we are aggrieved, poor, we are involved in commerce," he said, referring to the smuggling of goods, mainly cigarettes, gas and sugar from northern Iraq.

"The price of life is 60 liras (less than 30 euros) here," said a 19-year-old smuggler from the neighbouring village of Yemisli, referring to their daily income on a good day.

He said he had joined other villagers who went to the scene of the attack to search for bodies.

"They were killed intentionally," he said, declining to give his name.

Another 19-year-old smuggler from Yemilsi said he was among those who crossed into Iraq on Wednesday night to bring in goods, mainly cigarettes and gas, along with a group from Ortasu, the nearest to the site of the attack.

"We started to turn back together, walked together for about 10 kilometres, then we took our way to our village, and they took theirs," he said.

"Later, soldiers telephoned our village chief and told him that all the smugglers were dead. He told him to come and take the bodies. How could they know the dead people were smugglers if it is a mistake," he said.

Kitan Encu also accused soldiers of blocking the path of the smugglers as they were returning to Turkey.

"The group turned back to northern Iraq and they were bombed," she charged.