Curfew Lifted in Southeast Turkish Diyarbakir’s Baglar District

Officials in the majority-Kurdish southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakir lifted a counter-insurgency curfew in the district of Baglar on Monday.

ANKARA (Sputnik) – A Turkish police officer and 10 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) members were killed in the course of the anti-terrorist campaign in Baglar, with a further 16 security personnel wounded.

"The curfew announced March 15…has been removed starting 6:00 a.m. [04:00 GMT] due to the re-establishment of security and public order," Diyarbakir Governor Huseyin Aksoy said in a statement.

Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala announced on Sunday a round-the-clock curfew across seven southeastern regions.

He said about 200,000 police officers had been deployed to ensure public order during the popular Kurdish celebration of Newroz on March 20-21.

Renewed Ankara-PKK violence claimed the lives of 300 troops and police officers since July 2015. The Turkish general staff estimated over 1,000 Kurdish militants were killed in the campaign since mid-December, a figure that pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) officials argue includes hundreds of civilians.