8 Uzbek troops killed in clash with attackers

updated 3:12 a.m. ET May 16, 2005

FERGANA, Uzbekistan - Eight Uzbek soldiers and three Islamic militants died in a clash near the Kyrgyz border Sunday and more than 500 Uzbeks fled to safety across the frontier, witnesses said, in spreading violence that further threatened stability in this Central Asia country, a key American ally and host to an important U.S. military outpost.

The explosions of pent-up anger have now hit at least two Uzbek border towns in the volatile Fergana Valley. As many as 500 people reportedly were killed Friday in Andijan, Uzbekistan’s fourth-largest city about 30 miles west of the Kyrgyz frontier, when government troops were called in to put down an uprising by alleged Islamic militants and citizens protesting dire economic conditions.

About 500 bodies were laid out in rows at an Andijan school, according to a respected doctor in the town, seeming to corroborate other witness accounts of hundreds killed in the fighting. Relatives were arriving at Andijan’s School No. 15 to identify the dead, said the doctor, who spoke by telephone on condition she not be named.

2,000 wounded?
The doctor, who also said about 2,000 people were wounded, is widely regarded as knowledgeable about local affairs. She did not say how she arrived at her estimate.

Andijan officials were trying to reach a nearby airport to escape the unrest, she said, while some uprising organizers were trying to flee to Kyrgyzstan.

A resident who asked to be identified only by his first name, Ilkhom, said, “The city was burying its victims throughout the entire day, and the people are very angry at the president for his order to open fire at peaceful civilians.”

He said he saw the bodies of three men killed Sunday — apparently by a soldier who feared they were going to attack him, according to witnesses.

Gunfire on the outskirts of town
There were no more protesters in the square at the center of the uprising, the doctor said.

But reporters trying to enter the city late Sunday heard bursts of automatic gunfire on its western outskirts. Police officers at a checkpoint dropped to the ground and fired in the direction of the gunfire.

An Andijan resident reached by phone said gunfire rang out briefly near the city market in the afternoon. The resident, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said scores of troops backed by armored vehicles were deployed around the city’s main avenues, and authorities Sunday arrested several relatives of suspected participants in the unrest.

Abdugapur Dadaboyev, an Uzbek rights activist who visited Andijan on Saturday, said he saw dead bodies in police and military uniforms lying in the streets.

Civilians’ bodies, in contrast, were quickly removed from the streets, he said.

Russia’s state-run Channel One television showed footage of uniformed men with rifles slung over their shoulders carrying a corpse toward a truck and of a dead man lying face-down on a street, his head thrust between the bars of a fence and his legs still straddling an old bicycle. It said the video was shot Saturday.

Dadaboyev said two local officials who were among the hostages seized in Andijan were buried Saturday in the nearby town of Asaka.

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