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05/15/2005:

"Hundreds Dead in Uzbek Uprising"

ANDIJAN, Uzbekistan (AP) - An estimated 500 bodies have been laid out in a school in the eastern Uzbek city where troops fired on a crowd of protesters to put down an uprising, a doctor said Sunday, corroborating witness accounts of hundreds killed in the fighting.

The doctor, who said she had seen the bodies, said residents were coming to Andijan's School No. 15 to identify dead relatives, who had been placed in rows. Soldiers were guarding the school, said the doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for her safety.

The doctor also said she believed some 2,000 people were wounded in the clashes on Friday, but it wasn't clear how she arrived at that estimate. The doctor spoke with The Associated Press by telephone; most outside journalists left Andijan Saturday after several reporters were detained by police.

Thousands of terrified Uzbeks trying to flee into Kyrgyzstan burned a government building Saturday and attacked border guards, a second day of violence triggered by a brazen jail break to free accused Islamic militants and a massive demonstration against economic conditions under the iron-fisted rule of President Islam Karimov.

There was no immediate word on casualties in Saturday's violence in this former republic of the ex-Soviet Union. Witnesses on Friday had said 200 to 300 people were killed in the gunfire; the doctor's report of 500 dead raised that estimate.

Andijan is Uzbekistan's fourth-largest city, about 30 miles from the country's easternmost border in the narrow finger of territory that protrudes deep into Kyrgyzstan, where an uprising in late March ousted that country's only post-Soviet leader.

Groups of armed people clashed with Uzbek government forces along the border with Kyrgyzstan on Sunday, killing several soldiers before fleeing to the Kyrgyz side, Uzbek villagers said.
Full: guardian.co.uk