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Uzbeks bury dead after troops fire on protesters
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-05-16 09:21
Families of hundreds killed in Uzbekistan when troops opened fire to quell
protests buried their dead on Sunday as witnesses told of bloody mayhem in which
women and children were shot "like rabbits."
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.
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.
Relatives and friends of an Uzbek killed
during clashes between government forces and local protesters bury him at
a cemetery in the Uzbek town of
Andijan.[AFP] | Islam Karimov, 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.
Hizb ut-Tahrir denied involvement.
A Russian news agency, meanwhile, reported Uzbek troops had fired on
civilians trying to flee into neighboring Kyrgyzstan to escape the violence in
their homeland.
Uzbek troops moved in on protesters on Friday after armed rebels freed
comrades being held in jail during their trial for religious extremism.
They took 10 police hostage and occupied Andizhan's local government building
backed by several thousand sympathizers.
"They shot at us like rabbits," a boy in his late teens said, recalling the
horror of troops rampaging through the town square where some 3,000 protesters
had rallied to support the rebels.
![A military truck carries Uzbek soldiers on a road about 20 km (12 miles) outside the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan, Sunday, May 15, 2005. Security was tight in Andijan, Uzbekistan's fourth-largest city, as stunned residents cleaned blood off streets guarded by troops. [AP]](xin_330502160926196373210.jpg)
A military truck carries Uzbek soldiers on a
road about 20 km (12 miles) outside the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan,
Sunday, May 15, 2005. Security was tight in Andijan, Uzbekistan's
fourth-largest city, as stunned residents cleaned blood off streets
guarded by troops. [AP] | 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 center of this
leafy city of 300,000 people.
The United States, 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.
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.
Tashkent reacted angrily, Russia's RIA news agency said, saying Uzbek forces
had not fired on demonstrators.
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.
BURYING BODIES
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.
The facade of the two-storey School No. 15 was pockmarked with at least 20
bullet holes.
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.
Witnesses said that on Saturday, when soldiers started removing bodies, a
handful of wounded tried to get away but were shot dead on the spot.
"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."
The bloodshed prompted up to 4,000 people to flee to the closed border with
Kyrgyzstan.
"There have been about 1,000 people in the column I was in moving toward the
border," Russia's Interfax news agency quoted one of the refugees as saying.
"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."
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.
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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