ISTANBUL - Nearly 1,000 Kurds staged a protest in Istanbul Thursday against a Turkish airstrike that claimed 35 lives in Turkish-Iraqi border last night.

Organized by The Peace and Democracy Party and Freedom and Democracy Party, The outraged protesters gathered at Istanbul city center of Taksim square and shouted slogans on Thursday afternoon.

Clashes broke out as demonstrators threw stones against the police and attacked nearby shops while the police tried to disperse the crowd by cannoned water and tear gas.

A total of 35 people were killed in a Turkish air raid in Iraq's northern region of Sinat-Haftanin Wednesday night. Most of the villagers were under the age of 30.

Kurdish said that they were not members of the armed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), but diesel smuggling peasants.

First official explanation from Turkish government came from Interior Minister Huseyin Celik, who stated that many of the dead were smugglers mistaken for Kurdish militants.

"We have 30 corpses, all of them are burned. The state knew that these people were smuggling in the region. This kind of incident is unacceptable. They were hit from the air," said Fehmi Yaman, mayor of Uludere in Sirnak province.