Diplomats and journalists yesterday investigated widely diverging accounts of violence in Uzbekistan, assessing a death toll that ranged from 169 to more than 700 and touring the eastern city of Andizhan under government escort five days after it exploded in unrest.
Uzbekistan's top prosecutor has said 169 people were killed in Andizhan, mostly terrorists and government troops, but opposition activists maintain the violence last Friday in Andizhan and in other regional towns over the weekend left more than 700 dead -- most of them civilians killed by security forces.
President Islam Karimov and Prosecutor-General Rashid Kadyrov told a news conference in the capital, Tashkent, on Tuesday that Islamic militants were to blame for last week's unrest and denied that government forces had shot and killed any civilians.
"Only terrorists were liquidated by government forces," the prosecutor said Tuesday.
Kadyrov said 32 troops and 137 others, most of them "terrorists," including foreign fighters, were killed in Andizhan. He said that victims included hostages and civilians killed by militants, but didn't give any figures.
However, opposition leaders blamed government troops for most of the killings. They allege that over 500 people, many of them innocent civilians, were killed by security forces in Andizhan and more than 200 in the nearby town of Pakhtabad.
Britain and other governments urged Uzbek authorities to open Andizhan for international assessment, and the government allowed a visit by group of foreign diplomats and journalists, who arrived in Andizhan yesterday on a government-organized flight.
The unrest has been the worst since the former Soviet republic won independence in 1991.
Nigara Khidoyatova, head of the unregistered opposition Free Peasants Party, said her party reached its figure of 745 killed in Andijan and Pakhtabad by speaking to relatives of the missing. "The count hasn't yet finished, and the death toll will rise," she told reporters.
Karimov dismissed Khidoyatova's claim, saying she "needs psychiatric treatment."
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice again appealed to Uzbekistan's government to open its political system, expressing concern Tuesday over its human rights record and saying she hoped Uzbek authorities "would be very, very open in understanding what has happened here."
"Nobody is asking any government to deal with terrorists," she said of bloody clashes between government forces and protesters.
But Rice said innocent people had lost their lives and "that is always a cause for concern."
The events began last Friday when protesters stormed a prison in Andizhan, freed alleged Islamic militants and other inmates, and seized local government offices. Thousands of demonstrators filled the city's central square and listened to speeches, mostly complaining about poverty and unemployment.
That's when the government crackdown began.
An AP reporter and photographer saw trucks with troops drive by the square and open fire into the crowd after some protesters threw stones at them. Some protesters were armed.
"No one is talking about what kind of peaceful demonstration it was that was well-armed, attacked police and regular troops, seized their weapons, attacked a prison and freed 600 inmates," Karimov said Tuesday.
But at a tent camp across the Kyrgyzstan border, Uzbek refugees said their demonstration in the central square was peaceful and that the troops kept firing.
"They fired nonstop," said Tojiba Mukhtarova, 38, sitting in a tent with other women, adding that she was torn by thoughts of the five children she left in Andizhan. "We waved in the air with white scarves, but they continued to shoot at us."
A respected doctor in Andizhan, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear for her safety, told reporters she saw about 500 bodies laid out at a school during the weekend for collection by relatives.
But a physical education teacher at the school Tuesday, who didn't give his name, said there had been only "four or five" bodies there.
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