"We regard the Spanish soldiers who died on our land as our own children," Turkish Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul said in a ceremony in a park in Trabzon, below the hills where the Ukrainian-operated plane came down in thick fog, killing the soldiers and 13 crew.

At another ceremony, held at the crash site in the village of Sahinkaya, soldiers fired a volley of shots to symbolise what Anatolia news agency called "the souls of the Spanish troops rising to heaven."

Relatives of the dead soldiers wept as they traced the names of their loved ones carved into the monuments or gathered handfuls of soil to take home.

Spanish Defence Minister Jose Bono said he hoped that "these 62 worthy soldiers will live forever in our hearts."

The Yak-42 aircraft, owned by a Ukrainian charter company, crashed on its second attempt to land for refuelling on its way to Spain from Afghanistan by way of Kyrgyzstan.

WAR.WIRE