Thousands flee bloodshed in Kyrgyzstan

AFP

14 June 2010: Tens of thousands of Uzbek refugees have fled raging violence in Kyrgyzstan as the interim government struggles to stem the country’s worst ethnic clashes since the end of the Soviet Union.

Gunbattles between rival groups turned cities into warzones and marauding mobs torched whole villages last night on the third day of bloodshed in the Central Asian nation, leaving 102 people dead and more than 1200 injured.

 

 

Neighbouring Uzbekistan said up to 80,000 ethnic Uzbeks, mostly women and children, had fled the fighting and was being housed in hastily set up camps along the border as rights groups warned of a looming humanitarian crisis.

Russia sent paratroopers to protect its airbase in Kyrgyzstan but rejected requests from Bishkek to get involved in the unrest that has riven the country since President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was ousted in April.

Interim Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva’s provisional government late on Saturday gave security forces shoot-to-kill orders to protect civilians, amid growing calls from foreign leaders and aid groups to end the clashes.

"If we do not take opportune and effective measures, the unrest could become much more serious and descend into a regional conflict," it said.

It tightened a state of emergency to a 24-hour curfew in the Osh region, where the violence erupted Thursday and extended the emergency rule across the country’s entire southern Jalalabad region as fighting spread there.

Kyrgyz authorities sent five planes of soldiers from the capital, Bishkek, to Jalalabad, government radio reported, while the defence ministry mobilised all army reservists age 18 to 50 on Sunday.

But the violence raged on, with many refugees flooding the Uzbekistan border village of Yorkishlok accusing Kyrgyz law enforcement officials of abetting marauding gangs of ethnic Kyrgyz.

"They are killing us - all the Uzbeks - one after the other!" Rani, 51, said after quitting her home in the Osh region. "I fled. I don’t know what happened to my children and my grandchildren.

Uzbekistan has voiced "extreme alarm" over the situation, calling it an organised bid to inflame ethnic tensions, as it officially allowed people over the border for the first time.

"In the whole of the Andijan region, 32,000 adult refugees have been registered," Abror Kosimov, the head of the regional emergency services, told AFP, adding that the number of child refugees was in the thousands.

A police official put the number, including children, at more than 80,000.

In Kyrgyzstan’s south, panicked residents described ongoing chaos and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had warned of a growing humanitarian crisis.

"The authorities are not doing anything to stabilise the situation ... We are not even able to collect bodies from the streets," Ruslan, an Osh resident who preferred not to give his surname, said by telephone.

"The truth and the enormity of the tragedy cannot be hidden. The city centre is under the control of bandits."

In Jalalabad, where the worst of the fighting now appears to be centred, local resident Sergei Kim described gunbattles throughout the city.

"There are shoot-outs going on in the streets and many people. A gang is moving in the direction of the university," he said.

Smoke hung over the city as fires raged in several buildings, another local resident, journalist Zhalil Saparov, said.

The provisional government has struggled to impose order since coming to power during deadly riots that ousted Bakiyev and left dozens of people dead.

Bakiyev, exiled in Belarus, himself denied any link to the violence, slamming the suggestion as a "shameless lie".

Since April’s uprising, foreign leaders have warned of the risk of civil war in the strategic state, which hosts both a US airbase outside the capital that is vital to its operations in Afghanistan and Russian bases.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon expressed alarm on Sunday at the scale of the clashes, the inter-ethnic nature of the violence, the mounting casualties and the large number of displaced people, his spokesman said in a statement.

The UN is urgently assessing humanitarian aid needs, it added.

A Russian military source told the Interfax news agency three Russian military planes carrying paratroopers landed at the Kant base near Bishkek on Sunday to "ensure the security of Russian troops and their family members".