According to local authorities, nine people were killed and two others injured in a firefight over a land dispute in southeastern Turkey on Thursday.
“Unfortunately, eight of our fellow citizens were killed and three injured in the clash,” Diyarbakir Governor Ali Ihsan Su told Turkey’s official Anadolu News Agency.
The governor’s office later clarified in a statement that one of the injured died.
According to the authorities, clashes erupted between two families fighting over ownership of 20 hectares of agricultural land in Bismil district of the Kurdish-majority Diyarbakir province.
Images circulated by Turkish media showed the bodies of six men lying in a harvested wheat field, at least three of them armed with Kalashnikov automatic rifles.
According to the DHA news agency, the situation escalated after one of the groups set a fire on the disputed property.
In the provinces in the southeast of Turkey, the poorest in the country, there are often land disputes, some of which are still governed by a clan organization.