DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Two soldiers and a civilian were wounded when a car bomb exploded outside a gendarmerie station in Turkey’s southeastern province of Batman on Friday, the local governor’s office said.

The bomber was a suspected Kurdish militant who drove a stolen car through a police checkpoint and blew it up in front of the station in the Bekirhan district, the governor’s office said.

The bomber was killed in the attack, it said, without elaborating. No one immediately claimed responsibility, although the governor’s office said the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was believed to be responsible.

Two PKK militants had stolen the car hours before and had then opened fire on a car belonging to the local mayor, who was not in the vehicle at the time, the governor’s office said.

A teacher in a separate vehicle was killed in the gunfire and a bystander was wounded, it said.

Separately, two Turkish soldiers were killed and three were wounded in clashes with PKK militants at a military outpost in the southeastern province of Sirnak, security sources said.

A ceasefire between the Turkish state and the PKK broke down in July 2015, plunging Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast into some of the worst violence in decades.

The autonomy-seeking PKK first took up arms against the state in 1984. It is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, Turkey and the European Union.