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.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
COUNTERING HOSTILITY: The draft bill would require the US to increase diplomatic pressure on China and would impose sanctions on those who sabotage undersea cable networks US lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bipartisan bill to bolster the resilience of Taiwan’s submarine cables to counter China’s hostile activities. The proposal, titled the critical undersea infrastructure resilience initiative act, was cosponsored by Republican representatives Mike Lawler and Greg Stanton, and Democratic Representative Dave Min. US Senators John Curtis and Jacky Rosen also introduced a companion bill in the US Senate, which has passed markup at the chamber’s Committee on Foreign Relations. The House’s version of the bill would prioritize the deployment of sensors to detect disruptions or potential sabotage in real-time and enhance early warning capabilities through global intelligence sharing frameworks,
RSS