Kyrgyzstan’s interim leader yesterday asked Russia to send troops to help quell ethnic violence in the south of her country, which she warned had spiralled “out of control.”
Interim President Roza Otunbayeva appealed to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to send military forces to help stem the violence after a second day of ethnic clashes that have killed 62 and wounded almost 800 people.
“I have signed a letter asking Dmitry Medvedev for third-party forces to be sent to the Kyrgyz Republic,” Otunbayeva said in a nationally televised address. “Since yesterday the situation has got out of control. We need outside military forces to halt the situation. For this reason we have appealed to Russia for help.”
PHOTO: AP
Otunbayeva discussed her country’s situation with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin by phone late on Friday night, the Russian government said.
The provisional government — which seized control of the former Soviet state in April — had also appealed to retired police and army officers to go to the city of Osh to halt a descent into civil war.
“The authorities will be grateful for any volunteers who are ready to help prevent civil war in the south of Kyrgyzstan,” said government spokesman Azimbek Beknazarov, the 24.kg news agency reported.
Thousands of Uzbek women and children have fled the violence to the nearby border with Uzbekistan, a reporter witnessed, raising the specter of a possible humanitarian crisis.
The border remains sealed from the Uzbek side.
“We just want peace in Kyrgyzstan, we don’t want any wars with the Kyrgyz people ... But most of the Kyrgyz people don’t understand and we are suffering from their actions,” an elderly Uzbek woman, who declined to give her name, said at a border crossing near the Kyrgyz village of Markhamat. “They are shooting us, killing us!”
People reached by telephone in Osh described an increasingly violent and chaotic situation, with gunfire echoing across the city amid what seems to be a near-total collapse of central authority.
Andrea Berg, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who has been trapped in a guest house in Osh since the fighting began, pleaded for intervention by the international community.
“The situation here looks terrible. The government doesn’t have any more control over the city. It’s war,” she said. “There is no way for a safe passage out to the airport and the Uzbek neighbourhoods are burning. Shootings everywhere. Horrible phone calls from people locked in these mahallas [Uzbek neighborhoods] seeing how their neighbors are being slaughtered.”
Violence erupted in Osh overnight on Thursday when brawls between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz escalated into running street battles. Cars were smashed and burned and buildings set on fire throughout the city.
The toll of wounded may rise sharply once the government is able to enter the Uzbek neighborhoods, Berg warned.
The unrest also spread to Bishkek overnight on Friday, where one medical official said that 27 people had been hospitalized, some in critical condition.
Ethnic Kyrgyz protesters had commandeered cars and minibuses to travel south to Osh, while police used dogs to break up protests, the Kabar news agency reported.
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