About 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 in the town said yesterday, corroborating witness accounts of hundreds killed in the fighting.
The doctor, who spoke by telephone on condition of anonymity, said that Andizhan's School No. 15 was guarded by soldiers. Residents of the town were coming to identify dead relatives from among the dead, whom the doctor saw placed in rows.
The doctor, regarded as widely knowledgeable about local affairs, said she believed some 2,000 people were wounded in the clashes on Friday but it was unclear how she had arrived at her estimate.
Andizhan officials were trying to reach a nearby airport to escape the unrest, she said, while some organizers of the uprising were trying to flee to nearby Kyrgyzstan. There were no more protesters in the square at the center of the uprising, the doctor said.
Abdugapur Dadaboyev, an Uzbek rights activist who visited Andizhan on Saturday, said he saw dead bodies in police and military uniforms lying in the streets as of late evening. 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 on Saturday.
Dadaboyev said that two local officials who had been among the hostages seized in Andizhan were buried on Saturday in the nearby town of Asaka.
Following the day of violence in Andizhan, some 5,000 angry protesters swarmed the streets of the town of Korasuv on the border with Kyrgyzstan on Saturday, looting and burning official buildings, torching police cars and assaulting local officials.
Participants in the protest accused the government of failing to improve living conditions. The town that straddles the river border was split in two following the 1991 Soviet collapse, and two years ago Uzbek officials dismantled a bridge as part of their effort to impose new restrictions on traders.
The move has vexed Korasuv residents, who depended on a big market on the Kyrgyz side of the border to earn their living. Many people have drowned while trying to cross the river using ropes.
Korasuv residents quickly rebuilt the metal bridge and scores of jubilant traders flooded to the market yesterday.
At another section of the border, some 6,000 Uzbeks sought to cross to Kyrgyzstan to get shelter following the violence in Andizhan.
Kyrgyzstan has opened a camp for refugees fleeing from its western neighbor.
"A refugee camp has been put in place in the region of Jalal-Abad to offer indispensible aid to Uzbek citizens," the press office for Kyrgyzstan's emergencies ministry said.
The camp already housed some 600 people, many of them injured.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (UNHCHR) has sent representatives to the region to evaluate the situation, said Jerzy Skuratowicz, an official with the UN's Development Program.
Taiwan is projected to lose a working-age population of about 6.67 million people in two waves of retirement in the coming years, as the nation confronts accelerating demographic decline and a shortage of younger workers to take their place, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan experienced its largest baby boom between 1958 and 1966, when the population grew by 3.78 million, followed by a second surge of 2.89 million between 1976 and 1982, ministry data showed. In 2023, the first of those baby boom generations — those born in the late 1950s and early 1960s — began to enter retirement, triggering
One of two tropical depressions that formed off Taiwan yesterday morning could turn into a moderate typhoon by the weekend, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Tropical Depression No. 21 formed at 8am about 1,850km off the southeast coast, CWA forecaster Lee Meng-hsuan (李孟軒) said. The weather system is expected to move northwest as it builds momentum, possibly intensifying this weekend into a typhoon, which would be called Mitag, Lee said. The radius of the storm is expected to reach almost 200km, she said. It is forecast to approach the southeast of Taiwan on Monday next week and pass through the Bashi Channel
NO CHANGE: The TRA makes clear that the US does not consider the status of Taiwan to have been determined by WWII-era documents, a former AIT deputy director said The American Institute in Taiwan’s (AIT) comments that World War-II era documents do not determine Taiwan’s political status accurately conveyed the US’ stance, the US Department of State said. An AIT spokesperson on Saturday said that a Chinese official mischaracterized World War II-era documents as stating that Taiwan was ceded to the China. The remarks from the US’ de facto embassy in Taiwan drew criticism from the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation, whose director said the comments put Taiwan in danger. The Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday reported that a US State Department spokesperson confirmed the AIT’s position. They added that the US would continue to
The number of Chinese spouses applying for dependent residency as well as long-term residency in Taiwan has decreased, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday, adding that the reduction of Chinese spouses staying or living in Taiwan is only one facet reflecting the general decrease in the number of people willing to get married in Taiwan. The number of Chinese spouses applying for dependent residency last year was 7,123, down by 2,931, or 29.15 percent, from the previous year. The same census showed that the number of Chinese spouses applying for long-term residency and receiving approval last year stood at 2,973, down 1,520,
RSS