Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Uzbek Unrest Persists; Soldiers Killed

Updated 11:16 AM ET May 15, 2005






By BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA

FERGANA, Uzbekistan (AP) - Groups of attackers killed several soldiers in eastern Uzbekistan on Sunday before fleeing across the border into Kyrgyzstan, villagers said, and about 500 bodies were laid out in the nearby city where troops fired on a crowd of protesters, a doctor said.

Residents' accounts of the fighting in Tefektosh could not be independently confirmed, but blood stains were visible on the pavement there.

The village is in the same region as Andijan, where troops fired on a crowd of protesters Friday to put down an uprising, killing hundreds, witnesses said. On Sunday, about 500 bodies were laid out in rows in Andijan's School No. 15, a doctor in the town said.

The doctor, who spoke by telephone on condition of anonymity, said the school was guarded by soldiers and residents were coming to identify dead relatives.

The doctor, considered knowledgeable about local affairs, said she believed 2,000 people were wounded in Friday's clashes, but it was unclear how she arrived at her estimate.



Andijan officials were trying to reach a nearby airport to escape the unrest, she said, while some organizers of the uprising were trying to flee to neighboring Kyrgyzstan. There were no more protesters in the square at the center of the uprising, the doctor said.

Abdugapur Dadaboyev, an Uzbek rights activist who visited Andijan on Saturday, said he saw dead bodies in police and military uniforms lying in the streets. Civilians' bodies, in contrast, were quickly removed from the streets, he said.

Russia's state-run Channel One television showed footage of uniformed men with rifles slung over their shoulders carrying a corpse toward a truck and of a dead man lying face-down on a street, his head thrust between the bars of a fence and his legs still straddling an old bicycle. It said the video was shot Saturday.

Dadaboyev said two local officials who were among the hostages seized in Andijan were buried Saturday in the nearby town of Asaka.

Another Andijan resident reached by telephone said the city had been largely quiet overnight, aside from a volley of gunfire in an eastern district that lasted a few minutes.

Following the day of violence in Andijan, some 5,000 angry protesters swarmed the streets of the border town of Korasuv on Saturday, looting and burning official buildings, torching police cars and assaulting local officials.

Participants in the protest accused the government of failing to improve living conditions. The town that straddles the river border was split in two following the 1991 Soviet collapse, and Uzbek officials dismantled a bridge two years ago as part of their effort to impose new restrictions on traders.

The move vexed Korasuv residents, who depended on a big market on the Kyrgyz side of the border to earn their living. Many people have drowned while trying to cross the river using ropes.

Korasuv residents quickly rebuilt the metal bridge and scores of jubilant traders flooded to the market Sunday.

At another section of the border, some 6,000 Uzbeks sought to cross into Kyrgyzstan to get shelter following the violence in Andijan. About 500 were gathered on Kyrgyz territory just across the border, and Kyrgyz authorities and international relief groups were considering efforts to help them, said Almambet Matubraimov, the Kyrgyz presidential envoy to the border region.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov blamed Islamic extremists for the uprising in Andijan, the ex-Soviet republic's fourth-largest city. He claimed that people from Kyrgyzstan were among the organizers of the violence in the city, where protesters stormed a prison and occupied the local government offices before government forces put down the uprising.

The unrest presents a quandary for the United States _ which has declined comment on the situation _ because Karimov is considered a key ally in the fight against terrorism and the U.S. maintains a military base in Uzbekistan to support anti-terrorist operations in Afghanistan.

Karimov said 10 government soldiers and "many more" militants died in Friday's fighting. Witnesses said 200-300 people were shot dead, and an AP reporter saw at least 30 bodies in Andijan. Karimov said at least 100 people were wounded.

He claimed negotiations with the militants collapsed after they demanded all their followers be released from jails across the Fergana Valley, Central Asia's conservative heartland. The uprising began when the militants stormed a prison where the 23 were being held. Karimov said they freed 600 prisoners.

"To accept their terms would mean that we are setting a precedent that no other country in the world would accept," Karimov told a news conference in the capital, Tashkent, on Saturday.

Karimov claimed the uprising was orchestrated by a "faction of Hizb ut-Tahrir," a banned movement seeking to create an Islamic state in Central Asia. Hizb-ut-Tahrir has long been targeted by the Uzbek regime _ a campaign that has been one of human rights activists' top grievances against the authoritarian government.

The 23 businessmen at the focus of the uprising were charged with membership in a group allegedly allied with Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which seeks to create a worldwide Islamic state and has been forced underground throughout most of Central Asia and Russia.

The men are alleged members of Akramia _ a group named for their founder, Akram Yuldashev, an Islamic dissident sentenced in 1999 to 17 years in prison for purportedly urging Karimov's ouster. He has proclaimed his innocence. The group forms the heart of the city's small business community.

Their trial has inspired one of the largest public shows of anger at the government in years, and the largest outbreak of violence since Uzbekistan became an independent country after the 1991 Soviet collapse.


Associated Press reporter Burt Herman in Tashkent contributed to this report.



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