DIYARBAKIR: A leading Kurdish lawyer was shot dead on Saturday in southeast Turkey after unknown attackers opened fire on a gathering in the mainly Kurdish province of Diyarbakir, triggering a shootout with police, local officials and witnesses said.

The unknown assailants shot at Tahir Elci, head of the bar association in Diyarbakir, and 40 other activists as they were giving a press statement near a mosque in the city’s Sur district, according to witnesses. The police immediately returned fire, they said.

Southeast Turkey has been rocked by a new wave of unrest that has left several hundred people dead since a two-year-old truce between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fell apart in July.