20100617 Aid trickles in as violence intensifies around Kyrgyzstan

Aid trickles in as violence intensifies around Kyrgyzstan

AP , OSH, KYRGYZSTAN
Thursday, Jun 17, 2010, Page 1

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.