Suicide bomber kills 20 at Syria Kurdish festival

BEIRUT: A suicide bomber killed more than 20 people celebrating Kurdish new year in northeastern Syria on Friday and dozens were wounded in another blast at a separate feast, a monitor said.
“More than 20 people were killed when a kamikaze bomber detonated his explosives at a gathering in Hasakeh on the eve of (Kurdish new year) Nowruz,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
Dozens more were wounded, he added.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but Abdel Rahman said the suicide bomber could have been a member of the Islamic State group (IS).
He said a second bomb exploded at another Nowruz celebration, wounding dozens of people.
Hasakeh is a strategic province in northeastern Syria near its borders with Iraq and Turkey.
IS controls several parts of the province while fighters from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) hold the provincial capital, which is also called Hasakeh.
The YPG are sworn enemies of IS, which they expelled from the border town of Kobane in January after four months of fierce fighting with help from allied air strikes. Nowruz, or Persian New Year, begins on March 21.
Earlier, a British woman detained in Turkey on suspicion of seeking to join Islamic State (IS) insurgents in Syria was returned home on Thursday and promptly arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences, police said. The 21-year-old, identified by Turkish media as Jalila Nadra H., was arrested at Luton airport near London on suspicion of preparing acts of terrorism, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said.