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Home > News > World News > Article > Thousands flee ethnic bloodshed in Kyrgyzstan

Thousands flee ethnic bloodshed in Kyrgyzstan

Updated on: 14 June,2010 09:07 AM IST  | 
Agencies |

Tens of thousands of Uzbek refugees have fled raging violence in Kyrgyzstan that left 113 dead as the interim government struggled to stem the worst ethnic clashes since the end of the Soviet Union.

Thousands flee ethnic bloodshed in Kyrgyzstan

Tens of thousands of Uzbek refugees have fled raging violence in Kyrgyzstan that left 113 dead as the interim government struggled to stem the worst ethnic clashes since the end of the Soviet Union.


Gunbattles between rival groups turned cities into warzones and marauding mobs torched whole villages on a third day of bloodshed in the Central Asian nation. Neighbouring Uzbekistan said up to 80,000 ethnic Uzbeks, mostly women and children, had fled the fighting and were being housed in hastily set up camps along the border.


Rights groups warned of a looming humanitarian crisis. Russia sent paratroopers to protect its airbase in Kyrgyzstan but rejected requests from Bishkek to help end the unrest, the worst since President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was ousted in April.


Officials said 113 people have been killed in the three days of clashes and 1,400 injured. Interim Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva's provisional government late Saturday gave security forces shoot-to-kill orders to protect civilians, amid growing calls from foreign leaders and aid groups to end the clashes.

"If we do not take opportune and effective measures the unrest could become much more serious and descend into a regional conflict," it said. It tightened a state of emergency to a 24-hour curfew in the Osh region, where the violence erupted Thursday and extended the emergency rule across the country's entire southern Jalalabad region as fighting spread there.

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