Shooting continues, 500 dead in Uzbekistan uprising

Sporadic shooting continued today in an eastern Uzbek city where an uprising sparked a crackdown by security forces that left up to 500 people dead, and a human rights group reported that clashes in another town killed an additional 200 people.

The spreading unrest in a region bordering Kyrgyzstan – the worst since Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 – also left 11 people dead in clashes yesterday in a third town and sparked a rampage by residents in a fourth town on Saturday, witnesses said.

The government of President Islam Karimov has denied opening fire on demonstrators as witnesses have claimed, but the authoritarian government has sought to restrict access for reporters in the affected areas.

If the reports of more than 700 deaths since Friday are true, and if Uzbek forces were behind the killing – as most reports indicate – it would be some of the worst state-inspired bloodshed since the massacre of protesters in China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Saidjahon Zaynabitdinov, head of the local Appeal human rights advocacy group, said today that government troops had killed about 200 demonstrators on Saturday in Pakhtabad, about 18 miles northeast of Andijan.

That fighting would have come a day after some 500 people reportedly were killed in Andijan when government troops put down an uprising by alleged Islamic militants and citizens protesting dire economic conditions.

Andijan remained extremely tense today after gunfire continued throughout the night. Residents said government troops were fighting militants in Bogishonol, an outlying district of the city, but the claim could not officially be confirmed.

Troops and armoured personnel carriers formed a tight circle around the city centre, where the local administration building – at the centre of Friday’s violence – was on fire late yesterday. Piles of sandbags used as defences in the fighting dotted the streets.

Men were digging what appeared to be a large common grave at a local cemetery under the watch of many Uzbek security service agents.

“It is sheer genocide against the people,” Zaynabitdinov said. “The people now are more afraid of government troops than of any so-called militants.”

Karimov has blamed Islamic extremists for the violence.

The violence puts the US in a difficult position because it relies on Karimov’s government for an air base in the country and anti-terrorism support. So far US authorities have only called on both sides to work out their differences peacefully.