The government has demanded a full investigation after a Turkish TV star said he killed Greek Cypriots during Turkey's 1974 invasion of Cyprus, local media reported on Saturday (January 24th).

Actor Attila Olgac, who served in Cyprus during the 1974 intervention, told a TV show in Turkey that he killed ten Greek Cypriots in cold blood.

On Friday, Cypriot government spokesman Stephanos Stephanou said the government will take "all necessary steps" regarding the issue.

Olgac said he first shot a 19-year-old prisoner of war dead and then nine others. Later, however, Olgac retracted his statement, saying it was false and aimed at attracting attention to the brutality of war

Olgac said his first casualty had been a 19-year-old Greek-Cypriot prisoner of war. “When I held out the gun he spat in my face. Then I shot him in the forehead,” Olgac said. The actor said he then killed another nine people but did not specify whether they were POWs. He said he originally objected to killing – as an “artist” – but that his commanding officer said, “This is where art ends and real life begins.” He added that the killings still haunt him.

Last night the actor retracted his comments, saying that they had been taken from a script he had written about the brutality of the Cyprus conflict.

Cyprus urged Turkey on Friday to account for some 1,500 people missing since its invasion of the island 35 years ago. The call came after a former Turkish army conscript described how he had executed a prisoner of war.

Later in the day, however, the conscript retracted his statement, saying it was false.

In Greece, Foreign Ministry spokesman George Koumoutsakos said Olgac's account was "a stunning testimony and confession," and he urged Turkey to take action.

A United Nations-sponsored exhumation and identification program has so far unearthed the remains of 466 people from 230 burial sites on both sides of the divide.

To date, the remains of 110 people have been identified and returned to their families.

Relatives of missing Greek Cypriots, however, say the U.N. program does not go far enough and have a long-standing demand for a formal investigation to account for the fate of the missing.

.