BISHKEK: Rival groups fought for an hour with sticks, stones and horsewhips at Kyrgyzstan's Supreme Court yesterday, as a crowd stormed the building to throw out protesters who had occupied it since late April.

The incident underscored the volatility of the Central Asian state more than two months after the government fell in the face of popular unrest over disputed elections.

A Reuters' correspondent saw some 200 attackers - many of them with sticks - throwing out blankets and mattresses used by about 100 people who seized the building in late April.

After an hour of clashes, in which some men threw stones and women flogged each other with horse-whips, unarmed police and soldiers managed to separate the sides.

One witness said she had seen several injured taken away in ambulances. Police declined to comment.

"National Guard servicemen are now in control of the building," police colonel Temirkan Subanov told journalists at the scene, littered with the belongings of the ejected protesters.

But the situation was tense and many of those involved were seen roaming in nearby streets.

"I stand for justice, and the Supreme Court must resume its work," said a woman, who was among the attackers and who declined to give her name.

"The ones who occupied the building were only drinking tea inside the court. Now it's high time for those (judges) appointed by the authorities to re-start their work."

The protesters had taken over the building to press demands that the court resign.

The clashes also highlighted the tense divide between the mountainous nation's more developed north and the ethnically and culturally mixed south.

The attackers were from the north, arriving in buses to restore what they called "the people's power". Their opponents were mostly from the south.

(China Daily 06/02/2005 page7)