REFUGEES who fled a crackdown by Uzbek troops said yesterday they dared not return home, and the UN turned up the volume on its demands for an inquiry into deaths believed to have run into hundreds.

About 500 bodies have been laid out in rows at a school in the eastern Uzbek city where troops fired on protesters to put down an uprising, a doctor in the town said today, corroborating witness accounts of hundreds killed in the fighting.

Some 1,000 angry protesters gathered at the site of earlier violence in this Uzbek city Andijan today, placing six bodies on display among the dozens that witnesses said were killed in earlier fighting in the heart of Central Asia.

A series of explosions blamed on terrorists ripped through the Uzbek capital Tashkent today killing at least three policemen and wounding 20 people.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Baghdad today and praised the work of Iraqis who are stepping forward to help keep peace in their country.

Taliban rulers, vowing to ‘‘fight to the last’’ against those who side with the United States, today said they have sent thousands of troops to the border with Uzbekistan.