Embattled Kyrgyzstan's President Askar Akayev and his family have left Kyrgyzstan’s capital by helicopter, heading toward Kazakhstan, the Interfax news agency reported today.

A people's uprising appears under way in the former Soviet Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan today as protesters stormed the presidential compound.

ISLAMIC extremists were blamed yesterday for suicide bombings, attacks on police and an explosion at an alleged terrorist bomb-making factory in Uzbekistan that killed 19 people including the bombers and injured 26.

Seven people were killed and 26 were injured today when a container of fireworks exploded, detonating a gas tank in a crowded market in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek.

A DOZEN gunmen killed in a shootout with Afghan soldiers were Pakistani members of al-Qaida who had escaped from intelligence service detention in Kabul just hours earlier, the Afghan foreign minister reported yesterday.