Kyrgyzstan’s authorities struggled to impose order yesterday after five people were killed in ethnic riots, and concerns grew as to the whereabouts of the country’s ousted president.
Hundreds of police patrolled the village of Mayevka outside the capital Bishkek, a day after it was the site of clashes in which Kyrgyz rioters sought to seize plots of land from ethnic Russians and Turks.
Meanwhile supporters of the land seizures tried to hold protests in Bishkek yesterday only to be met with a heavy police presence.
“All the provocateurs and ringleaders in the riots will be punished to the full extent of the law,” the interim Kyrgyz government said in a statement.
In Moscow, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev voiced support for the interim government, which took power earlier this month after a popular uprising that overthrew Kyrgyzstan’s president.
“Both Uzbekistan and Russia want the authorities in Kyrgyzstan to be strong and the people of Kyrgyzstan to develop and flourish,” Medvedev said, quoted by news agencies, at a meeting with visiting Uzbek President Islam Karimov.
Police have detained 130 people involved in the Mayevka riots, the Kyrgyz interior ministry said in a statement.
Five people were killed in the rioting, included two residents of Mayevka who died from gunshot wounds according to the health ministry.
A total of 40 people were injured, including 10 policemen, the interior ministry said.
Around 600 police supported by armored personnel carriers are currently patrolling Mayevka, an interior ministry source said.
Mayevka is home to a mix of Russians, Kyrgyz and Meskhetian Turks, a group that lived in Georgia until 1944, when Stalin’s mass deportations to Central Asia.
“The crowd poured into Mayevka and started wreaking destruction, robbing and killing. They mainly robbed and burned the homes of Turks living in the village,” said Alexander Konstantin, an ethnic Russian resident of Mayevka.
“They killed my neighbor …The rioters spotted him and dragged him into the yard. They beat him to death and mutilated him so that he was unrecognizable,” Konstantin told journalists.
Yesterday about 500 supporters of the land seizures tried to rally near a bus station in Bishkek only to be dispersed by police. The protestors responded by throwing rocks.
In a separate protest, about 300 supporters of the land seizures gathered in southern Bishkek to demand the handover of the belonging of ousted Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiyev and his allies.
The turmoil was the latest challenge to the interim government, which seized power this month after a popular uprising that ousted Bakiyev.
So far the interim government has failed to establish full control over the country, a mountainous former Soviet republic and home to a US air base that supplies operations in nearby Afghanistan.
Bakiyev was confirmed on Monday to have left Kazakhstan, where he was flown last week in an action coordinated by the US and Russia aimed at quelling tensions in Kyrgyzstan.
The Kazakh foreign ministry said Bakiyev had left, but gave no indication of where the toppled president had gone.
Bakiyev is wanted by the interim Kyrgyz government in connection with the shootings of demonstrators during protests at the beginning of the month in which 85 people were killed.
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