Turkish authorities on Monday lifted a curfew in the mainly Kurdish southeastern city of Cizre after re-imposing it for 12 hours following a deadly nine-day military lockdown, the regional governor’s office said.

Turkish authorities on Monday lifted a curfew in the mainly Kurdish southeastern city of Cizre after re-imposing it for 12 hours following a deadly nine-day military lockdown, the regional governor's office said.

The curfew, enforced as the army battles Kurdish militants, had first been put in place on the evening of September 4 and then lifted last Friday amid concerns of a humanitarian crisis in the battered city.

Local residents on Saturday ventured outside for the first time, stocking up on supplies and burying victims who were killed by the army during the curfew.

However the regional authorities in Sirnak province re-imposed the curfew from 1600 GMT on Sunday evening for another operation to arrest Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants.

"The curfew in Cizre has been lifted as of 7:00 am (0400 GMT)," the Sirnak governor's office said in a statement early Monday.

The Turkish government said that up to 32 Kurdish militants were killed during the previous nine-day curfew in an "anti-terror" operation against suspected members of the PKK.

But the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) has said 23 civilians were killed during the operation, which triggered food shortages.

HDP MP Muslum Dogan, Turkish development minister in the current caretaker government, said Monday that the victims ranged from a 35-day-old baby to an 85-year-old woman. Hundreds were also wounded, he added.

"Can a 35-day old child be a terrorist?"  he said in Ankara, quoted by Turkish media. "Can this be someone who carries arms?"
"We need to get this country out of this chaos," he added.

Thousands attended funerals on Sunday morning in Cizre for 16 of those killed during the curfew.

The operation in Cizre, a city of 120,000 on the border with Syria and close to Iraq, came as part of the government's drive to cripple the PKK in southeast Turkey and northern Iraq, a campaign that started in late July and shows no sign of abating.

Meanwhile, the authorities also lifted curfews imposed early Sunday in several areas of the central Sur district of Diyarbakir, the biggest city in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast, as well as in Silvan in its wider region.