About 14 people have died in the northeast Syrian city of Kameshli in fighting at a soccer match and rioting by Kurds, and the interior minister has gone to the area to restore order, residents said on Saturday.

Interior Minister Ali Haj Hammoud went to the Kameshli area, near Syria's borders with Turkey and Iraq, to take charge of efforts to end two days of disturbances during which buildings have been damaged in several towns and up to 40 people badly injured, they said.

An official statement carried by the SANA state news agency said an investigation had been launched to find the perpetrators of the riots, and threatened the "severest punishment" for those responsible.

The violence began on Friday when five people were killed and hundreds injured when fighting erupted at a soccer match in Kameshli and caused a stampede by spectators trying to escape, residents said.

The stadium clash led to rioting by Syrian Kurds in the city on Saturday in which about nine people died and up to 40 needed hospital treatment, residents and medical sources said.

The rioting spread to nearby Amouda, Ras al-Ain and al-Hassaka, where buildings were also damaged, residents said.

The official statement said a commission had been formed "to investigate these incidents and reveal their perpetrators and provokers, and the severest punishments will be taken against those who manipulate the security and stability of the homeland and citizens.."

"Those who committed these acts will be held accountable under the law," it said.

The Kurdish unrest in Syria apparently sparked a protest in Belgium late on Saturday, when 40 to 50 Kurds forced their way into the grounds of the Syrian embassy in Brussels but police dispersed them within an hour.

Belgian police said a number of Kurds were arrested. No one was hurt

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The statement indicated the authorities believed that the riots had been deliberately provoked. "...abusing what happened in the (municipal) Kameshli stadium by some of those planted to instigate acts of riot and provocation that targeted citizens and public and private property express the nature of its perpetrators and violate the law," it said.

The statement did not mention any ethnic group as being responsible for the riots, but confirmed that there had been deaths and injuries and that public and private property in the area had been damaged.

Sources close to government thinking said earlier that certain Kurdish politicians were turning the issue "from a soccer match riot into an issue of a political dimension," a reference to demands by some 200,000 Syrian Kurds who are not recognized as citizens.

In Damascus, Kurds blocked the main road leading to the suburb of Dummar and damaged several cars before riot police dispersed them, making several arrests, witnesses said. Police also dispersed Kurdish students who assembled at a Damascus University dormitory, other witnesses said.

Last month Syria's state security court convicted two Kurdish activists of seeking a breakaway state in part of Syria, but commuted their three-year jail sentence to the 14 months they had already served in custody.

Kurds make up some two million of Syria's 17 million population, but Syrian officials avoid reference to Kurds as a distinct minority and stress the importance of national unity.

Kurds and members of other minorities in Syria have held senior government and army positions