Kurdish fighter buried in Hassakah as Kobani prison riot kills seven

Hundreds of mourners gathered in the northeastern Syrian city of Hassakah on Saturday for the funeral of a Kurdish man whose killing earlier in the week set off protests across northern Syria.

Local media identified the deceased as Sami Sheikh Moussa Hasso, a former member of the Syrian Democratic Forces who had since been integrated into Syrian government forces. Video from the burial showed a young girl grieving beside the coffin as fighters carried the body through the streets, chanting in Kurdish, "Martyrs don't die." Mourners later lowered the coffin into the grave, with further chants of "Long live the resistance of prisoners" ringing out.

Riots erupted in several cities on Friday after Kurdish demonstrators blamed Arabs for Hasso's death. Authorities said they were investigating the killing.

The unrest has unfolded against a backdrop of persistent friction between Syria's Kurdish minority and the central government, even as recent steps have been taken to bring the northeast under the control of the new administration in Damascus.

On Saturday, a fire and riot at a prison in Kobani killed at least seven people, state media reported. The SANA news agency said the blaze began when inmates rioted over tensions that had flared in the town a day earlier between Kurds and Arabs. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said the disturbances were triggered by plans to transfer some prisoners to a facility in the northern city of Aleppo.

Kobani, which was besieged by the Islamic State group a decade ago, became a launchpad for a U.S.-backed Kurdish offensive that ended in 2019 with the extremists losing the last sliver of territory they once controlled.