Heavy arms fire rang out over the Kyrgyz city of Osh before dawn yesterday as authorities struggled to bring order to the Central Asian country’s south after days of deadly ethnic riots.
The violence — which erupted last Thursday in Osh between the majority Kyrgyz population and Uzbeks and spread to surrounding regions — has prompted more than 100,000 Uzbeks to flee for their lives to Uzbekistan, with tens of thousands more camped on the Kyrgyz side of the border or stranded in a no man’s land.
Humanitarian aid was trickling in via Uzbekistan, though some supplies coming via Osh were reportedly intercepted and volunteers attacked.
One of the few Uzbek families to remain in Osh said a mother of two was killed by shrapnel from a shell launched toward their home by the Kyrgyz military.
“The Kyrgyz are out of control. They are destroying us,” said Abdumanap Mamasydykov, 38, at a funeral for the woman, his 48-year-old sister Gelbar Alynbayeba.
They had remained in Dostyk, an Uzbek quarter of Osh, to tend to elderly relatives too frail to flee.
The claim that authorities were firing on Uzbeks could not be verified, but a photographer saw military patrols and heard artillery fire from their positions in central Osh overnight. No other armed units or groups had been seen.
The official death count from the past week of violence rose to 189 yesterday, with 1,910 wounded, the Kyrgyz Health Ministry said. However, observers believe the real toll is much higher.
Meanwhile, thousands of ethnic Uzbeks were camped in squalid condition near the Uzbekistan border, waiting to cross and enter one of the dozens of refugee camps there. At a crossing near Jalal-Abad, frustration was mounting as several hundred who had made it into Uzbekistan tried to return to Kyrgyzstan but were refused re-entry.
The UN has been delivering aid through Uzbekistan, saying there was a lack of security along routes through Kyrgyzstan.
Kyrgyz authorities said about 160 tonnes of aid have been sent to Osh and Jalal-Abad — another city to suffer serious damage in the rioting. But there were concerns about whether it was all reaching the needy.
Aid workers in Osh have received numerous threats of physical violence if they deliver aid to ethnic Uzbeks, human rights advocate Yelena Voronina told Internet-based news agency 24.kg.
One woman said Kyrgyz men in military uniform had stolen supplies from an aid center in central Osh. Munojat Tashbayeva, a 31-year-old sociologist, said the 20 or so men in uniform stormed a building where five sacks of flour had just been delivered and ordered her to get out, threatening to shoot her if she objected, before hauling the sacks away.
The US has allocated US$10 million for humanitarian aid, the embassy in Bishkek said.
The week of violence follows the bloody uprising in April that toppled Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
The UN has declared that the fighting was “orchestrated, targeted and well-planned” — set off by organized groups of gunmen in ski masks. The UN statement stopped short of apportioning blame, but it nevertheless bolstered claims by the interim Kyrgyz government that hired attackers organized by Bakiyev marauded through Osh, shooting at both Kyrgyz and Uzbeks to inflame old tensions.
RETHINK? The defense ministry and Navy Command Headquarters could take over the indigenous submarine project and change its production timeline, a source said Admiral Huang Shu-kuang’s (黃曙光) resignation as head of the Indigenous Submarine Program and as a member of the National Security Council could affect the production of submarines, a source said yesterday. Huang in a statement last night said he had decided to resign due to national security concerns while expressing the hope that it would put a stop to political wrangling that only undermines the advancement of the nation’s defense capabilities. Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) yesterday said that the admiral, her older brother, felt it was time for him to step down and that he had completed what he
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft