DAMASCUS, Syria (AP)--The latest clashes between security forces and Kurds in northern Syria have left at least eight people dead, a Kurdish politician and a witness said Wednesday.

The deaths from Tuesday's violence would raise to at least 24 the number of people who have died in recent fighting among Kurds, police and members of Syria's Arab majority.

The Syrian government, which has not issued any casualty figures since Kurdish clashes with police began before a soccer game on Friday, did not confirm the report.

Ahmed Qassem of the Democratic Kurdish Party in Syria said two Kurds and three police officers were killed Tuesday in a riot in Aleppo, Syria's second-biggest city, while a third Kurd was hospitalized and died of his wounds on Wednesday.

Aleppo is 200 miles north of the capital, Damascus.

Two other people were killed in a riot in Afreen, 40 miles north of Aleppo, witness Othman Mohammed said.

Qassem said both riots began as Kurdish demonstrations to commemorate the anniversary of Saddam Hussein's deadly 1988 poison gas attack on the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja.

In Aleppo, security forces opened fire on hundreds of Kurds who were marking the anniversary of the Iraqi attack, which killed thousands of people, Qassem said. The Kurds fought police with knives, sticks and stones, but it was not clear how the violence started.

Clashes involving Syria's Kurdish minority began Friday with a brawl between supporters of two teams in a soccer stadium in Qamishli, 450 miles northeast of Damascus. One of the teams had many of Kurdish players.

Kurds then went on the rampage on Saturday in Qamishli during a funeral for the riot victims. It spread to the neighboring city of Hasakah. More than 100 people were wounded.

The riots are the first major disturbances for many years in Syria, where the ruling Baath party has little tolerance for dissent.

The unrest has raised concern that the Kurds, whom the constitution does not recognize, have been emboldened by the political role that Kurds have assumed in neighboring Iraq since Saddam's ouster by U.S.-led forces last year.

The state-run newspaper Al-Thawra published an editorial Wednesday that blamed the violence on ``intriguers'' inspired by ``foreign pressures.''

A Kurdish politician in Qamishli, Faisal Youssef, denied that the Kurds were driven by external pressure.

``We would never allow anybody to interfere in our internal affairs,'' said Youssef, of the Progressive and Democratic Kurdish Party in Syria.

Kurds make up about 1.5 million of Syria's 18.5 million people. Most live in the underdeveloped provinces of Qamishli and Hasakah.

AP-NY-03-17-04 0642EST

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