A bomb blast in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast has killed a local government official and wounded at least two other people, authorities said today.
The explosion, which state-run Anadolu news agency blamed on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), tore through the area near a government building in the town of Derik yesterday.
The PKK, which has waged a bloody insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, has resumed attacks on security forces since a fragile ceasefire broke down last year.
The fatality was named as Muhammet Fatih Safiturk, 35, who had served as sub-prefect as well as mayor of Derik.
He had been tasked by the government with running the area as part of a vast effort to replace local authorities suspected of PKK ties.
He "was martyred early Friday by wounds sustained in a PKK terrorist attack on his office a day earlier," provincial authorities said in a statement.
After the attack, security forces apprehended 20 people in the area and they were being held for questioning, Anadolu reported.
Ankara has replaced a string of local elected leaders in the Kurdish majority southeast, which the government says is part of its effort to battle the PKK.
In the latest such move, an administrator was appointed on Friday to take over from the mayor of Varto municipality in eastern Mus province, who was held on Wednesday on suspicion of "terrorist activities".
Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party, the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), on Sunday said it was pulling out of parliament after nine of its MPs including the two co-leaders were arrested.
Western allies worry that a state of emergency imposed after the coup bid is being used for a general crackdown against critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and not just the suspected plotters.
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