Interim leader: Up to 2,000 dead in Kyrgyz clashes

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Interim leader: Up to 2,000 dead in Kyrgyz clashes

2 hours, 45 minutes ago

By Leonard, The Associated Press

OSH, Kyrgyzstan - Kyrgyzstan's interim president said Friday that 2,000 people

may have died in the ethnic clashes that have rocked the country's south — many

times her government's official estimate — as she made her first visit to a

riot-hit city since the unrest erupted.

The deputy head of the provisional government, Azimbek Beknazarov, put the

official death toll on both sides at 223 on Thursday, but others said the figure

could be significantly higher. The deaths have been due to rampages led mainly

by ethnic Kyrgyz against Uzbeks.

" I would increase by 10 times the official data on the number of people killed, "

Interim President Roza Otunbayeva said, according to her spokesman, Farid

Niyazov. She said current figures don't take into account those buried before

sundown on the day of death in keeping with Muslim tradition, according to the

spokesman.

There was no indication of whether a comprehensive body count was conducted, but

Otunbayeva's estimate appeared credible. Official counts have been solely on

deaths registered at major hospitals, but accounts from ethnic Uzbeks say

several hundred people have died.

" It is closer to this figure " of 2,000, Niyazov said.

The United Nations said that as many as 1 million people may eventually need aid

in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, including the refugees, internally displaced, host

families and others who may suffer from the unrest.

UNICEF spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume said the figure was an estimate to help

aid agencies plan. She says the actual number of people in need may turn out to

be higher or lower.

The aid agencies say those uprooted by the unrest most urgently need food,

water, medicine and shelter.

The U.N.'s aid airlift into Kyrgyzstan was scheduled to begin this weekend. Two

chartered Ilyushin-76 cargo planes carrying 80 tons of relief items are expected

to arrive in Osh.

Meanwhile, the sixth flight into Uzbekistan is expected to land at Andijan,

Uzbekistan, later Friday, completing the initial load of some 240 tons of relief

supplies.

Otunbayeva arrived early Friday by helicopter in the central square of Osh, a

city of 250,000 where the violence began last week. Parts of the city have been

reduced to rubble by mobs of young Kyrgyz men who burned down Uzbek homes and

attacked Uzbek businesses.

The United Nations estimates that 400,000 people fled the country's south.

" We have to give hope that we shall restore the city, return all the refugees

and create all the conditions for that, " Otunbayeva said.

She said good will between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks would end hostilities.

Up to 100,000 people have crossed the border into Uzbekistan, where they are

getting food and water in camps. Thousands more remain camped in squalid

conditions on the Kyrgyz side of the border, unable to cross due to Uzbek

restrictions. Over the past few days, Uzbek border guards have placed quilted

blankets over barbed wire at the border to allow refugees in Uzbekistan to

return.

Migration official Alik Bayboriyev told the AP that there were 31,800 refugees

on the Kyrgyz side of the border near Jalal-Abad, a hard-hit town near Osh.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Blake, visiting a refugee camp in

Uzbekistan about 5 kilometres (3 miles) from the Kyrgyz border, said he was

working to ensure the refugees would be able to return home safely.

Blake was swamped by crying refugees, mainly older women and children,

complaining they were desperate to return home but too fearful to do so.

" We ... believe there should be an investigation, " he said. " We are working with

the government of Kyrgyzstan to provide security so you can return home safely. "

Blake asked the refugees if they thought the violence had been organized, as the

United Nations and Kyrgyz authorities have suggested.

" Yes, of course it was organized, it all happened so unexpectedly, " answered one

refugee, Nasiba Mamyrdzhanova, from Osh, who wore a traditional Uzbek

long-sleeved dress with a bright headscarf.

Blake toured a hospital in the eastern city of Andijan that had taken in 115

wounded refugees, asking doctors about the medical care they were receiving.

In a sign that tensions remain high, hundreds of ethnic Uighurs have fled

communities in the capital, Bishkek, after receiving threats that they would be

the next targets of violence.

As many as 70,000 Uighurs, a Turkic people with a significant presence in

Central Asia and into China's far western regions, live in or near Bishkek. Most

have fled for Kazakhstan, where many have relatives, the vice-president of the

country's Uighur community, Zhamaldin Nasyrov, told the AP.

He said unidentified people have visited the communities in jeeps, writing

ominous warnings on houses and fences.

" Instigators who want to sow panic act in these villages, " Nasyrov said. " We try

to ignore their threats, but we are trying to work out security measures to

protect our women and children. "

Kyrgyz authorities have said the violence was sparked deliberately by associates

of Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the president who was toppled in April. The U.N. has said

the unrest appeared orchestrated but has stopped short of assigning blame.

Ethnic Uzbeks on Thursday accused security forces of standing by or helping

ethnic-majority Kyrgyz mobs as they slaughtered people and burned

neighbourhoods. Col. Iskander Ikramov, chief of the Kyrgyz military in the

south, rejected allegations of troop involvement but said the army didn't

interfere because it was not supposed to play the role of a police force.

" We are all witnesses to the fact that innocent citizens were fired upon from an

armoured personnel carrier by soldiers in military uniform. I don't know whether

they were from the government or some third party, but they only shot at

Uzbeks, " said Sabir Khaidir, and ethnic Uzbek in Jalal-Abad.

Rakhim Tadjibayev, an ethnic Uzbek whose house was burned down nearby, stepped

forlornly around the rubble.

" There's nothing left, " said Tadjibayev, who returned Thursday from three days

at the border with his family.

The military and police set up roadblocks and began patrols this week after the

worst violence was over.

Uzbeks interviewed by Associated Press journalists in Osh said that, on one

street alone, ethnic Kyrgyz men sexually assaulted and beat more than 10 Uzbek

women and girls, including some pregnant women and children as young as 12.

Members of the Kyrgyz community have denied accusations of brutality and have

accused Uzbeks of raping Kyrgyz women. Eyewitnesses and experts say many Kyrgyz

were killed in the unrest, but most victims appear to have been Uzbeks,

traditional farmers and traders who speak a different Turkic language and have

been more prosperous than the Kyrgyz, who come from a nomadic tradition.

More than 1 million Uzbeks who lived in Kyrgyzstan before the crisis had few

representatives in power and pushed for broader political and cultural rights.

About 800,000 of them lived in the south, rivaling Kyrgyz in numbers in Osh and

Jalal-Abad. Both ethnic groups are predominantly Sunni Muslim.

___

Associated Press writers Yuras Karmanau in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Eliane Engeler

in Geneva and Masha Stromova in Uzbekistan contributed to this report.

[Guest guest]

I'm also wondering if there is religious component to this fighting as well.

In a message dated 6/18/2010 12:25:30 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes:

Interim leader: Up to 2,000 dead in Kyrgyz clashes