A Danish tourist was killed by a roadside bomb last week while cycling in strife-ridden northern Iraq. The country’s local Kurdish authorities blamed Turkish Kurdish insurgents for planting the device, but the perpetrators have not been confirmed.

Cycling tours are not very common in Dohuk, a semiautonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, due to unpaved roads and faulty infrastructure. Iraq at large is also strewn with land mines and unexploded ordnance left over from years of conflict.

Authorities in Denmark confirmed that a Danish citizen had died in northern Iraq but did not say more.

According to a police statement, Torbjorn Methmann died in an explosion while cycling with a companion to the town of Amedi, a popular tourist attraction in the area known for its archeological sites. The statement also said the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK, an insurgent group in neighbouring Turkey, was behind the bombing, though no proof was offered.

Iraqi authorities have been trying to open up the country to tourism in recent years and the federal government in Baghdad offers visas to tourists upon arrival.

While the Kurdish-run north is considered safer and more stable than the rest of Iraq and typically hosts more tourists, the PKK, a militant group waging an insurgency against Turkey since the 1980s, has safe havens in northern Iraq and even controls some areas of Dohuk province near the Turkish border. Ankara routinely bombs these positions and criticizes the Iraqi Kurdish government, accusing it of not doing more to root out PKK from its territory.