Kurdistan leader slams Syria for killing three Kurds

President of Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, has condemned an incident in which Syrian security forces killed three Kurds. The incident took place in Qamishli in north-east Syria on Thursday night when a group of Kurdish youths were celebrating Nowruz - the start of their New Year. Qamishli is the capital of the Kurdistan region in Syria.  "An argument between the revellers and the police in the city of Qamishli developed into a shooting on Thursday evening," the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement.

"We strongly condemn the killing of the innocent people in Qameshli. These people were just celebrating the beginning of their new year and had committed no crime," Barzani said Sunday in a statement, cited by AFP. The Kurdish leader called for an investigation on the deadly incident, urging Syrian President Bashar Assad to "punish the perpetrators of the crime."