Kurds mark festival of New Year

Although festivities were peaceful in northern Iraq, crowds clashed with police in south-eastern Turkey.

At least 70 people were arrested after scuffles and stone-throwing in the south-eastern city of Diyarbakir.

In the past, the festival has turned violent in Turkey as it has become a platform for demanding increased political freedoms.

Leaping over fire

Nowruz - which means New Year in Farsi and marks the solar New Year - is also celebrated in Iran, Afghanistan and the former Soviet Central Asian nations.

Many mark the day by leaping over flames, which symbolise destroying past impurities or memories.

In the Turkish capital, Ankara, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged unity between Kurds and Turks.

"May the seeds of hatred that aim at our brotherhood burn and disappear in the fires that are being lit," he said as three of his ministers jumped over a small fire.

Thousands of Kurds gathered in the cities of Diyarbakir, in the southeast, in Istanbul and in Izmir.

Flags

Despite laws banning rebel propaganda, many hoisted banners with images of Abdullah Ocalan above their heads as they sat on each other's shoulders, their faces covered.

Others waved the flags of his banned separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK, in the air.

Reports said that sections of the crowd began throwing stones at police after they tried to remove a banner supporting the PKK.

But in the northern autonomous Kurdish enclaves of Iraq, the day was marked peacefully with people outdoors holding picnics and dances.

The BBC's Jim Muir, in northern Iraq, says Iraqi Kurds have spoken of how, during the rule of Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, they were banned from celebrating Nowruz.

Now, he says, the community enjoys a stability and relative security that is very rare in the rest of the country.

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