Government troops reclaimed control of an eastern Uzbek town where rebels announced they would build a strict Islamic state, arresting the group’s leaders without bloodshed, residents said today.

Uzbek officials took foreign diplomats and journalists on a lightning-quick tour of Andijan today, showing them a prison and the local administration building and arranging meetings with local officials, as the top UN human rights official called for an independent investigation.

A group of foreign diplomats and journalists arrived in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan today to assess the scope of a violent government crackdown on demonstrators.

An opposition leader today claimed her party had compiled a list of 745 people killed by government troops in Uzbekistan last week.

Flowers dotted the streets and freshly-dug graves scarred the earth across the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan as residents mourned what witnesses said were hundreds killed by security forces last week – the worst unrest since the former Soviet republic won independence in 1991.

Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov claimed today that authorities had tried to negotiate a peaceful end to street protests, but that troops were forced to fire into demonstrators to put down an uprising.

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.

An armed crowd freed inmates from a prison in an eastern Uzbekistan city as thousands of activists took to the streets today to protest the trial of 23 Islamic businessmen on extremism charges while security forces fired into the air, witnesses said.