OSH, Kyrgyzstan — Mobs of rioters slaughtered Uzbeks and burned their homes and businesses in Kyrgyzstan’s worst ethnic violence in decades, sending more than 75,000 members of the ethnic minority fleeing the country in attacks that appeared aimed at undermining the Central Asian nation’s new interim government.
The casualty toll Sunday rose to at least 104 people killed and 1,231 wounded in southern Kyrgyzstan in days of attacks, according to government estimates Sunday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said its delegates witnessed about 100 bodies being buried in one cemetery.
Fires set by rioters raged across Osh, the second-largest city in Kyrgyzstan, as triumphant crowds of ethnic-majority Kyrgyz men took control. Police or military troops were nowhere to be seen in the city of 250,000. Food was scarce after looting, and the few Uzbeks still left barricaded themselves in their neighborhoods.
The rampages spread quickly to Jalal-Abad, another major southern city 45 miles from Osh, and its neighboring villages, as mobs methodically set Uzbek houses, stores and cafes on fire. Rioters seized an armored vehicle and automatic weapons at a local military unit and attacked police stations across the region, trying to get more guns.
Some refugees were fired on as they fled to Uzbekistan. They were mostly elderly people, women and children, with younger men staying behind to defend their property.
Many of the more than 75,000 refugees arrived with gunshot wounds, the Uzbekistan Emergencies Ministry said, according to Russian reports.
“We saw lots of dead. I saw one guy die after being shot in the chest,” said Ziyeda Akhmedova, an Uzbek women in her late 20s, at one of several camps set up along the border.
She was among the first refugees to reach the border Friday and said the Uzbek border guards were reluctant to let them in until an approaching Kyrgyz armored personnel carrier began firing.
She had little hope of returning home soon.
“Our houses have been burned down,” Akhmedova said. “I don’t know how we will live, how we will talk to the people who shot at us.”
The United States, Russia and the U.N. chief expressed alarm about the scale of the violence and discussed how to help the refugees.
Conflict in context
Historic divide: The fertile Ferghana Valley, where the cities of Osh and Jalal-Abad are located, once belonged to a single feudal lord, but it was split by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin among Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The Stalinist borders rekindled old rivalries and fomented ethnic tensions.
Blaming politics: In April, President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was ousted. Uzbeks back the new interim government, while many Kyrgyz in the south support the toppled president. The current violence appears aimed at undermining the new government. Bakiyev has denied accusations that this family had any role in the attacks.
