Turkish leadership joins funeral for five policemen killed in Iraq

ANKARA, Dec 20 (AFP) - Turkey's top leaders attended an emotional funeral ceremony Monday for five Turkish policemen killed in an ambush in Iraq, pledging every effort to capture and punish "traitors and cowards" behind the attack.
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and Chief of General Staff Gen. Hilmi Ozkok were among the officials who attended the ceremony at the interior ministry, along with hundreds of soldiers and policemen.
The five officers and two Iraqi drivers died Friday when a four-car convoy carrying a group of policemen assigned to guard duty at the Turkish embassy in Iraq was ambushed near the northern city of Mossul on its to Bagdad.
Two officers who survived the attack reached the Iraqi capital, while a third returned to the Habur border post between the two countries.
The incident triggered anger in Turkey, which has already lost dozens of nationals in Iraq, mostly truck drivers, killed in armed ambushes or at the hands of hostage-takers.
"Turkey is a country that values Iraq's territorial and political unity and gives it more humanitarian aid more than anyone else," Gul said at the ceremony. "Unfortunately, there are traitors and cowards who still fail to appreciate Turkey's generosity."
"Turkey should not have paid the price (for supporting Iraq) with the lives of ... 80 of its children," Erdogan said.
He called the perpetrators of the attack "terrorists and murderers" and promised to press the US-led coalition forces and the Iraqi interim government to capture and punish the assailants.
Soldiers carried the five coffins draped in Turkish flags on their shoulders as the victims' relatives and colleagues wept and prayed.
An official from the Iraqi Turkmen Front in Mosul told the Turkish news agency DHA that the assailants machine-gunned the policemen after forcing them out of the cars and making them lie on the ground.
One of the officers was reportedly decapitated.
US forces who control the region killed two of the assailants, DHA said.

12/20/2004 11:37 GMT - AFP