500 bodies laid out after Uzbek unrest

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.

Relatives were arriving at School No. 15 to identify the dead, said the doctor. Another 2,000 people were wounded in the clashes on Friday, said the doctor.

The government has given no clear casualty figures. President Islam Karimov has said 10 government soldiers and “many more” protesters died and at least 100 people were wounded in the uprising, but witnesses reported hundreds killed.

On Sunday, there were no more protesters at the square that was the centre of violence, the doctor said. Another Andijan resident reached by telephone said the city was largely quiet overnight.

But villagers in the border town of Tefektosh said several troops were killed in a skirmish between armed men and government forces early today. Their account could not be verified, but blood could be seen on the pavement.

Karimov has blamed Islamic extremists for the uprising in which protesters stormed a prison, freed inmates and then seized local government offices before government troops put the protest down with force.

The violence was Uzbekistan’s worst since gaining independence following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.