Police in the southern Turkish province of Mersin have taken into custody eight municipal workers in home raids at dawn on Wednesday, based on an arrest warrant for 30 people in total.
Mersin municipality’s Press and Public Relations Director Bedrettin Gündeş and seven other workers have been arrested. Among the 22 remaining people on the list, 10 more work for the municipality.
A prosecutor issued the warrant over alleged terrorist propaganda, and the arrests are separate from another round of arrests in the same night when 22 people were taken into custody in relation to Monday’s bomb explosion in the city.
Two women were caught on security camera opening fire on police lodgings in the city, and then detonating the bombs they had attached to their persons. Both women were killed in the explosions and the clashes that followed, according to Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu.
The minister also announced the identity of one of the alleged attackers, whose family home was raided the following day. The alleged attackers’ father, two brothers and one sister were arrested.
Soylu blamed the attack, which killed one police officer, on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), but the armed group has not yet claimed responsibility for the attack.