Clashes spread in northeast Syria, at least 30 dead: Kurdish officials

QAMESHLI (Syria) March 17 - Unrest in Kurdish areas of northern Syria is spreading, with clashes between Kurds and local Arab residents backed by security forces killing 17 people, Kurdish officials said Wednesday.

They said the Kurdish death toll since rioting broke out in the city of Qameshli at the weekend has risen to at least 30, with 250 injured, adding that some Arabs had also been killed.

Mashaal Timo, a member of the political bureau of the Kurdish People's Union, said nine people were killed in the Asharafiye and Sheikh Maksud districts of Aleppo, the main northwestern city.

Another six people were killed in the village of Ifrin, 40 kilometres (25 miles) northwest of Aleppo and two others in Ras al-Ain, on the Turkish border to the northeast, he said.

The clashes began Tuesday and continued overnight, and followed police suppression of rioting in the city of Qameshli following disturbances between Kurds and Arabs during a football match on Friday.

Timo said Arabs had also been killed at Qameshli and Arab tribesmen seeking revenge had attacked Kurdish villages along the Turkish border, including Amuda, Derik, Ain Diwar, Malkiye and Derbassiye.

He said Syrian authorities were trying to restore calm and had held a meeting with leaders of both sides.

On Tuesday Kurdish sources put the death toll at 19 since the weekend, but Abdel Aziz Daoud, general secretary of the also-banned Kurdish Democratic Progressive Party, said Wednesday a total of 30 people had been killed in the administrative regions of Hassake and Aleppo.

No figure was available from the Syrian authorities.

Salah Kiddo, a party colleague of Timo, also gave the figure of 30 deaths, adding that 250 Kurds had also been hurt.

Hospital sources contacted by AFP reported five killed in the past 24 hours at Aleppo and six at Qameshli. They could not say if the dead were all Kurds.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime blames the unrest on ``foreign plots'' aimed at causing dissension as Syria faces the implementation of US sanctions.

A cabinet statement Tuesday carried by official media attributed the troubles to ``infiltrated elements (aiming to) sow anarchy and sabotage public institutions and private property.''

The Gulf Cooperation Council of the six oil-rich Arab monarchies on Tuesday condemned what it called ``acts of sedition'' that threatened the security not only of Syria but of the Arab world.

It considers ``any attack on the security of Syria as an attack on Arab security,'' GCC Secretary General Abdelrahman al-Attiya told journalists.

``Recent developments in Syria'' were on the agenda of talks Assad was to have in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, a Saudi source said Tuesday.

But a message to Assad from Syria's Kurdish political parties accused ``certain Syrian officials'' of stirring up tension between Kurds and Arabs.

``These officials want to persuade the media of a plot to destabilise the country,'' it added.

Meanwhile the Syrian Human Rights Association, while condemning ``acts of sedition'' by Kurds who had ransacked and burned buildings in Qameshli, called for the ``immediate release of those who have been arrested in recent days.''

Human rights lawyer Anwar Bunni told AFP Tuesday that hundreds of Kurdish Syrians had been arrested, 300 of them in Kurdish-populated areas of Damascus, where demonstrations had also taken place. - AFP