UP TO 200 people were reported yesterday to have been killed and many others injured after security forces fired machineguns into crowds protesting against the authoritarian regime of President Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan.
The shooting began on Friday night and continued yesterday in the eastern city of Andizhan as forces loyal to Karimov tried to prevent an uprising similar to those that have ousted the leaders of three other former Soviet republics in the past two years.
“Tell the world that what is happening is terrible. They are executing us — unarmed civilian people,” said Lutfulo Shamsutdinov, a human rights activist who claimed to have seen about 200 bodies being loaded onto lorries and a bus in the city centre.
Last night 60 bodies were counted at a mortuary in Andizhan. Many others were said to have been taken away by relatives and there were suggestions that some had been driven out of the city in an attempt to conceal the scale of the apparent massacre.
A crowd of 1,500 people opposed to Karimov gathered defiantly around a further 15 bodies lying in one of the main squares after a day of sporadic gunfire. One opposition figure claimed that the death toll could eventually reach 500. Hundreds of Uzbeks fleeing the country later stormed government buildings in the border village of Korasuv 30 miles east of Andizhan, attacking troops and setting fire to cars.
Several British tennis stars taking part in a tournament in Andizhan were caught up in the fighting. Richard Bloomfield, David Sherwood, Arvind Parmar and Jamie Delgado were among seven British tennis players who escaped from the city yesterday under armed guard.
The violence began late last week when a large group of militants attacked a police station, seizing a number of weapons. The armed insurgents then stormed a prison, freeing 23 men who were on trial accused of religious extremism and 2,000 other prisoners.
As demonstrators took to the streets to demand Karimov’s resignation, a government building was seized and several police officers were held hostage. Heavy street fighting broke out and the military was called in to quash the protests.
“The soldiers were shooting wounded people dead, finishing them off in the street. Some were children,” said Azim Karimov, who was injured as he searched for his two children.
“How can this be? Don’t they have children of their own? What the hell is our president thinking? How can he order to shoot at his own people?”
The president, who has been in power since 1989 and is regarded in Washington as an ally in the war on terror, was said to have travelled to Andizhan when the trouble began but returned to Tashkent, the capital, after six hours.
He denied that orders had been given to shoot protesters and blamed the violence on Hizb ut-Tahrir, an outlawed Islamic group. “Nobody ordered troops to fire at them,” Karimov told a press conference. He acknowledged that 10 soldiers and “many more” protesters had been killed.
Witnesses said that on Friday 1,500 people gathered outside a cinema where some of the worst bloodshed ensued.
“Among them were some 20 armed people. The rest were unarmed, mainly children and young people,” said Shamsutdinov. “The security forces fired into the crowd from an armoured personnel carrier cannon. Dozens were killed on the spot. The building was destroyed.”
One unnamed witness described how a taxi in which he was a passenger was hit by the army in the city centre.
“A boy sitting next to me was hit in the head,” he said. “There was blood everywhere. I took him myself to the hospital where he is now dying.”
There were unconfirmed reports that several civilians were killed after militants who had barricaded themselves in a government building used them as human shields.
Yesterday the impoverished industrial city was almost sealed off as telephone links were blocked. A government broadcast warned that “all journalists and visitors should leave within 30 minutes”.
The Uzbek authorities also jammed foreign television channels inside the country as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan closed their borders.
The White House called for restraint on both sides. Karimov, a Soviet-era Communist party boss, has been allied with President George W Bush since giving permission for US forces to launch operations from Uzbekistan against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
The president said his troops had been forced to shoot at demonstrators to put down an uprising. He said infiltrators from Kyrgyzstan were among the organisers of the violence and the authorities had intercepted telephone calls to Afghanistan from those taking part.
Attempts to negotiate with the militants had failed, he said, because their ultimate goal was to create an Islamic state.
In March protests in Kyrgyzstan culminated in the storming of the presidential building. President Askar Akayev fled the country and later resigned. Fearing the same fate, Karimov stepped up his campaign against suspected Islamic militants.
With 26m people, Uzbekistan is the most populous of the former Soviet central Asian republics. Analysts believe turmoil there could spread to other countries.
“The militants had hoped that the chaos we saw in Kyrgyzstan would help them,” said Karimov. “But Uzbekistan is different and our people’s goals are different from the misery of the Kyrgyz people.”
Craig Murray, the former British ambassador, warned of a risk of further bloodshed in Uzbekistan in the days ahead. “I have felt for some time this sort of protest was about to happen and these events have confirmed those fears,” he said yesterday.
“I have spoken this morning to several friends in Tashkent and it perhaps reflects the clampdown on the media that they are unaware of what is happening. It is potentially very dangerous.”
200 reported dead as shooting goes on in Uzbekistan protests
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Originally Posted by Steppe Merc
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