Rival groups clashed in southern Kyrgyzstan on Friday as the interim government retook official buildings from backers of ousted Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, leaving at least one dead and scores injured.
Shots rang out during street battles in the cities of Osh and Jalalabad, where hundreds of Bakiyev supporters battled factions loyal to the government with sticks and stones, officials and reports said.
The health ministry said one person was killed in Jalalabad and 59 were wounded, 26 of them with gunshot wounds, lowering the number of injured from 63. Unconfirmed reports put the death toll higher.
PHOTO: AFP
A doctor at Jalalabad regional hospital said three people died in the clashes, while a spokeswoman for Bakiyev’s support committee, Dzhanara Moldokulova, said that eight protesters were killed. Government supporters regained control of regional administration headquarters in Jalalabad and Osh after they were seized by supporters of former president Bakiyev on Thursday, government officials said. In Bishkek, government head Roza Otunbayeva said authorities were “taking all measures to peacefully resolve the situation.”
The capital is calm, she added, and the government is “taking measures to restore order in Jalalabad.”
Several Bakiyev allies, including the former head of his office, Usen Sydykov, were detained during the clashes, Otunbayeva said.
Protesters burnt down three houses belonging to Bakiyev and his brothers in a village outside Jalalabad, a spokesman for the interim government, Farid Niyazov, told journalists.”
“The arson attacks were carried out by relatives of people who suffered in the people’s uprising in Bishkek on April,” Niyanzov said, adding that no one was injured.
The US embassy in Bishkek, in a statement, expressed concern about the violence, urging “the peaceful resolution to the problems that have caused this situation,” it said.
Russian president Dmitry Medvedev on Friday sent his special representative, Vladimir Rushailo, to Bishkek, where he held talks with Otunbayeva.
“Russia has come to help us,” Otunbayeva told journalists after the talks. “President Dmitry Medvedev said clearly: They will support Kyrgyzstan politically and materially at this hour.”
“Our aim is to help Kyrgyzstan in all aspects of its activities,” Rushailo told journalists.
In Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton voiced “serious concern” and urged the rival camps “to do everything to calm the situation and not to escalate it further by organizing shows of force.”
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS