Gunfire Persists in Eastern Uzbek City
********************************************************
Today: May 16, 2005 at 11:17:30 PDT
ANDIJAN, Uzbekistan (AP) -
0516uzbek Gunfire persisted Monday in the eastern city where Uzbek security forces fired on protesters last week - a clash that reportedly left several hundred dead - and new accounts emerged that violence in nearby towns killed hundreds more, further threatening the stability of the government in this key U.S. ally in Central Asia.
Andijan residents said government troops were fighting militants in an outlying district, but that claim could not be confirmed.
Alexei Volosevich, an Andijan correspondent for the Fergana.ru Web site, said witnesses told him that militants fired at police from apartment buildings near the prison and that police eventually killed the assailants. There was no word about police casualties.
Troops and armored personnel carriers formed a tight circle around the city center, where the local administration building - at the center of Friday's violence - was on fire late Sunday.
Saidjahon Zaynabitdinov, head of the local Appeal human rights advocacy group, said Monday that government troops killed about 200 demonstrators Saturday in Pakhtabad, about 20 miles northeast of Andijan. There was no independent confirmation of his claim.
Men were digging graves, including what appeared to be a large common grave, at a local cemetery under the watch of Uzbek security agents.
"The people now are more afraid of government troops than of any so-called militants," Zaynabitdinov told Associated Press Television News.
The violence puts the United States in a difficult position because it relies on Karimov's government for an air base in the country and anti-terrorism support.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday the United States was "still trying to understand" what happened in Andijan.
"The main preoccupations are now to encourage everybody to forgo any further violence, to help with the refugees that went into Kyrgystan out of Uzbekistan, and to try to deal with the consequences right now of this set of issues," she said.
The violence in Pakhtabad would have come a day after some 500 people reportedly were killed in Andijan - Uzbekistan's fourth-largest city - when government troops put down a prison uprising by alleged Islamic militants and citizens protesting dire economic conditions.
The clashes in the region bordering Kyrgyzstan were the worst since Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. If the reports of hundreds of deaths since Friday hold 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.
President Islam Karimov's government has denied opening fire on demonstrators, instead blaming Islamic extremists for the violence. The authoritarian government has restricted access for reporters in the affected areas.
A respected local doctor in Andijan told The Associated Press on Sunday that about 500 bodies had been laid out at a school for collection by relatives. There was no independent confirmation of that claim by the doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fears for her safety, but other witnesses have said hundreds were killed when troops put down the uprising Friday.
The doctor also said by telephone that about 2,000 people were wounded, but she did not say how she arrived at her estimate.
Inera Safargaliyeva, whose Committee for Freedom of Speech and Expression helped organize Friday's demonstration, also said about 500 people were killed. She did not elaborate on the source of her information.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw condemned the violent crackdown and demanded that journalists, the Red Cross and ambassadors be given access to the affected areas.
"We remain very concerned about the accounts we have received about troops opening fire on civilians in Andijan," Straw said in London. "This plainly cannot be justified."
In the capital Tashkent, rights activists and opposition politicians laid flowers Monday at a memorial to those killed in Andijan. They were surrounded by uniformed police and plainclothes security agents but allowed to talk to reporters.
Prosecutor General's office spokeswoman Svetlana Artikova said her office had launched a criminal investigation into the demonstration in Andijan. She would not comment on the number of people arrested.
Channel One state television aired a report praising Karimov and accusing militants in Andijan of firing at civilians. Khushnudbek Matmusayev, a medical doctor, told Channel One that militants fired at an ambulance, killing two medics and a driver.
The report showed broken furniture and equipment, and bloodstains inside the administration building, which was occupied by armed protesters. It also showed scattered syringes and suggested that militants were using drugs.
A U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of compromising his position, said government troops concentrated Monday near Namangan, the site of the regional airport and a major transport hub in the Fergana Valley. Namangan also is the birthplace of Juma Namangani, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a Taliban-allied group that was fighting to establish an Islamic state in the valley.
Namangani was believed to have been killed in Afghanistan in 2001 or 2002, but recent reports in the valley suggest he may still be alive.
In a clash Sunday in Teshiktosh, eight soldiers and three civilians were killed and hundreds of Uzbeks fled into Kyrgyzstan, witnesses said.
Kyrgyz border guards spokeswoman Gulmira Borubayeva said 150 Uzbek citizens tried to cross near the Uzbek village of Ayim late Sunday, but Kyrgyz border guards turned them back.
The U.N. official said he had received reports about a skirmish in the same area Monday between Uzbek militants and Uzbek government forces. Borubayeva said her agency was not aware of such an incident but was checking into it. Security measures at the border were reinforced after events in Andijan, she said.
Thousands of terrified refugees converged on a border crossing at the village of Barash, about 30 miles north of Andijan. More than 500 made it to Kyrgyzstan and then set up a tent camp in a nearby field.
A U.N. refugee agency team that inspected the camp in the Suzak region said most of the 560 Uzbeks who arrived there Saturday were men. The agency said 18 were wounded.
Borubayeva said Monday that 537 Uzbek residents crossed the border seeking help.
Karimov, viewed as one of the most authoritarian leaders still in control of a former Soviet republic, cut his political teeth under the old communist system which brooked no civil disobedience. Before the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, many regional leaders ordered military or police attacks against their own people when they massed in protest in places like Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.
---
Associated Press reporters Bagila Bukharbayeva and Burt Herman in eastern Uzbekistan contributed to this report.
--
This is what jumped out at me!!!