Andijan, Uzbekistan – Gunfire persisted today in the eastern city where Uzbek security forces fired on protesters last week – a clash that reportedly left several hundred dead – and new accounts emerged that violence in nearby towns killed hundreds more, further threatening the stability of the government of this key U.S. ally in Central Asia.
Andijan residents said government troops were fighting militants in an outlying district, but that claim could not be confirmed.
Alexei Volosevich, an Andijan correspondent for the Fergana.ru website, said witnesses told him that militants fired at police from apartment buildings near the prison and that police eventually killed the assailants. There was no word about police casualties.
Troops and armored personnel carriers formed a tight circle around the city center, where the local administration building – at the center of Friday’s violence – was on fire late Sunday.
Saidjahon Zaynabitdinov, head of the local Appeal human rights advocacy group, said today that government troops killed about 200 demonstrators Saturday in Pakhtabad, about 20 miles northeast of Andijan. There was no independent confirmation of his claim.
Men were digging graves, including what appeared to be a large common grave, at a local cemetery under the watch of Uzbek security service agents.
“The people now are more afraid of government troops than of any so-called militants,” Zaynabitdinov told Associated Press Television News.
The violence in Pakhtabad would have come a day after some 500 people reportedly were killed in Andijan – Uzbekistan’s fourth-largest city – when government troops put down a prison uprising by alleged Islamic militants and citizens protesting dire economic conditions.
The clashes in the region bordering Kyrgyzstan were the worst since Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
If the reports of hundreds of deaths since Friday hold true and if Uzbek forces were behind the killing – as most reports indicate – it would be some of the worst state-inspired bloodshed since the massacre of protesters in China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.
President Islam Karimov’s government has denied opening fire on demonstrators, instead blaming Islamic extremists for the violence.
The authoritarian government has restricted access for reporters in the affected areas.
A respected local doctor in Andijan told The Associated Press on Sunday that about 500 bodies had been laid out at a school for collection by relatives. There was no independent confirmation of that claim by the doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fears for her safety, but other witnesses have said hundreds were killed when troops put down the uprising Friday.
The doctor also said by telephone that about 2,000 people were wounded, but she did not say how she arrived at her estimate.
Inera Safargaliyeva, whose Committee for Freedom of Speech and Expression helped organize Friday’s demonstration in Andijan, also said about 500 people were killed. She did not elaborate on the source of her information.
The violence puts the United States in a difficult position because it relies on Karimov’s government for an air base in the country and anti-terrorism support. So far U.S. authorities have only called on both sides to work out their differences peacefully.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on today condemned the violent crackdown and demanded that journalists, the Red Cross and ambassadors be given access to the affected areas.
“We remain very concerned about the accounts we have received about troops opening fire on civilians in Andijan,” Straw said in London. “This plainly cannot be justified.” In the capital Tashkent, rights activists and opposition politicians laid flowers today at a memorial to those killed in Andijan. They were surrounded by scores of uniformed police and plainclothes security agents but were allowed to talk to reporters.
Prosecutor General’s office spokeswoman Svetlana Artikova said her office had launched a criminal investigation against those detained on charges of staging riots in Andijan. She refused to comment on the number of people arrested.
A U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of compromising his position, said government troops were concentrated today near the city of Namangan, the site of the regional airport and a major transport hub in the Fergana Valley. Namangan also is the birthplace of Juma Namangani, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a Taliban-allied group that was fighting to establish an Islamic state in the valley.
Namangani was believed to have been killed in Afghanistan in 2001 or 2002, but recent reports in the valley suggest he may still be alive.
In a clash Sunday in the border town of Teshiktosh, eight soldiers and three civilians were killed and hundreds of Uzbeks fled into neighboring Kyrgyzstan, witnesses said.
Kyrgyz border guards spokeswoman Gulmira Borubayeva said 150 Uzbek citizens tried to cross the border near the Uzbek village of Ayim late Sunday, but Kyrgyz border guards turned them back because they tried to bypass existing crossings.
In another border community, Korasuv, an estimated 5,000 people went on a rampage Saturday and forced authorities to restore a bridge across a river marking the eastern border with Kyrgyzstan.
Thousands of terrified refugees converged on a border crossing at the village of Barash, about 30 miles north of Andijan. More than 500 made it to Kyrgyzstan, setting up a tent camp in a field just across the border.
A U.N. refugee agency team that inspected the camp in the Suzak region of Kyrgyzstan said most of the 560 Uzbeks who arrived there Saturday were men. The UNHCR said 18 of them were wounded.
Borubayeva said today that 537 Uzbek residents had crossed the border seeking help.
Karimov, viewed as one of the most authoritarian leaders still in control of a former Soviet republic, cut his political teeth under the old communist system which brooked no civil disobedience.
Before the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, many regional leaders had ordered military or police attacks against their own people when they massed in protest in places like Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.
