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.”
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