- (Reuters) - least 600 people were killed in a military
crackdown following protests in the Uzbek city of Andijan, the head of
a local non-governmental organisation who saw the bodies said today.
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- Families of hundreds have buried their dead as witnesses
told of bloody mayhem in which women and children were shot "like
rabbits".
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- Five hundred bodies lay stored yesterday in one of the
eastern city's schools, said the head of the Animokur organisation, Gulbahor
Turdiyeva. Another 100 were packed in a nearby construction college, she
added in a telephone interview.
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- In a single incident in Andizhan on Friday, witnesses
said soldiers had fired on a crowd including women and children and their
own police comrades who were begging them not to shoot.
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- Hundreds of bodies lay overnight outside the eastern
town's School No. 15 after the massacre until they were removed in the
early hours on Saturday, the witnesses, who did not wish to be named, said.
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- Islam Karimov, autocratic president of the mainly Muslim
Central Asian state, said troops were given no order to fire in Andizhan.
He blamed the violence on rebels belonging to the outlawed Islamist group
Hizb ut-Tahrir.
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- Hizb ut-Tahrir denied involvement.
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- A Russian news agency, meanwhile, reported Uzbek troops
had fired on civilians trying to flee into neighbouring Kyrgyzstan to escape
the violence in their homeland.
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- Uzbek troops moved in on protesters on Friday after armed
rebels freed comrades being held in jail during their trial for religious
extremism.
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- They took 10 police hostage and occupied Andizhan's local
government building backed by several thousand sympathisers.
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- "They shot at us like rabbits," a boy in his
late teens said, recalling the horror of troops rampaging through the town
square where about 3000 protesters had rallied to support the rebels.
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- Two days after the uprising in Uzbekistan's Ferghana
Valley, blood and body parts could still be seen on sidewalks and in gutters
in the centre of this leafy city of 300,000 people.
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- The US - for whom Karimov is a close ally in the war
on terrorism after providing Washington with an airbase in 2001 - has urged
the conflicting sides to show restraint. It says political change in the
tightly controlled ex-Soviet state should come only through peaceful means.
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- In Britain, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw denounced "a
clear abuse of human rights, a lack of democracy and a lack of openness"
and called on Uzbekistan to allow in the Red Cross and foreign observers
to establish what happened.
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- Tashkent reacted angrily, Russia's RIA news agency said,
saying Uzbek forces had not fired on demonstrators.
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- Karimov on Saturday said 10 police and troops had been
killed and a higher number of rebels had also died, but he gave no figure
for civilians killed.
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- Human rights campaigner Saidzhakhon Zainabitdinov estimated
up to 500 people may have been killed in the ensuing operation to crush
the protests, which would make it the bloodiest incident in Uzbekistan's
post-Soviet history.
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- At one of Andizhan's cemeteries, grave digger Wahhabjon
Mominov said on Sunday he had already dug four graves in the morning to
take victims of Friday's violence.
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- The facade of the two-storey School No. 15 was pockmarked
with at least 20 bullet holes.
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- Pools of wet blood mixed with water and dirt could be
seen in the blocked open drains. A blood-soaked baseball cap lay in bushes.
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- Witnesses said that when soldiers started removing bodies
yesterday, a handful of the wounded tried to get away but were shot dead
on the spot.
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- "Those wounded who tried to get away were finished
with single shots from a Kalashnikov rifle," said one witness, a businessman.
"Three or four soldiers were assigned to killing the wounded."
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- The bloodshed prompted up to 4000 people to flee to the
closed border with Kyrgyzstan.
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- "There have been about 1000 people in the column
I was in moving towards the border," Russia's Interfax news agency
quoted one of the refugees as saying.
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- "Uzbek troops shot at us several times although
we shouted to them that we are civilians," he said. "The last
time we came under fire was when we were breaking through to Kyrgyzstan.
There were wounded and as far as I know four people were killed."
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- Nearby southern Kyrgyzstan, also part of the Ferghana
Valley, is home to many ethnic Uzbeks and was the starting point for violent
protests earlier this year which led to the overthrow of President Askar
Akayev.
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- The Kyrgyz coup followed the peaceful overthrow of established
leaders in Ukraine and Georgia. The firm rule Karimov exerts on his country
would appear to rule out any such peaceful revolutions taking place in
Uzbekistan.
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- with AFP
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