‘Several hundred’ people dead in Kyrgyzstan unrest

RIOTING has killed several hundred people in the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan, the Red Cross said yesterday, as new reports strengthened suspicions that the violence was deliberately ignited to undermine the interim government.

The southern part of the impoverished Central Asian nation has been convulsed by days of rioting targeting minority Uzbeks, which has left the country’s second-largest city, Osh, in smouldering ruins and sent over 100,000 Uzbeks fleeing for their lives to neighbouring Uzbekistan.

The International Committee of the Red Cross had no precise figure of the dead, but spokesman Christian Cardon said “we are talking about several hundreds”. That figure is significantly higher than the current official estimate.