MARKHAMAT, Kyrgyzstan: Kyrgyzstan’s interim government Saturday gave the the military and police shoot-to-kill powers to quell ethnic unrest in the country’s south as it partially mobilized the army.
Lethal force will be authorised to repel attacks against the authorities, stop the destruction of government and private property and protect civilians, the government’s decree said.
“The violence, the number of pillages and massacres are growing… If we do not take opportune and effective measures the unrest could become much more serious and descend into a regional conflict,” it said in a statement announcing the mobilisation.
Interim President Roza Otunbayeva earlier appealed to Moscow to intervene militarily after at least 75 people were killed and more than 1,000 wounded, according to the health ministry, in nearly three days of unrest.
“Since yesterday the situation has got out of control. We need outside military forces to halt the situation. For this reason we have appealed to Russia for help,” said Otunbayeva in a nationally televised address.
But while Moscow said it was rushing humanitarian aid to the former Soviet Central Asian republic, a spokeswoman for President Dmitry Medvedev said it would not yet send troops.
“This is an internal conflict and Russia does not yet see the conditions for its participating in resolving it,” Natalya Timakhova was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying.
A decision to dispatch peacekeepers could be taken only after consultations with the United Nations, she added.
The provisional government has struggled to impose order in the Central Asian state since seizing control during riots that ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in April.
Witnesses said clashes had broken out between ethnic Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbek groups in the main southern city of Osh, once the stronghold of Bakiyev.
A second state of emergency in the southern city of Jalalabad was necessary because “instability is spreading,” Deputy Interim Minister Azimbek Beknadzarov declared on national television.
Violence erupted in the Osh region overnight to Friday when brawls between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks escalated into running street battles, prompting the government to impose a curfew and state of emergency.
Cars were smashed and burned, and buildings set on fire.
In panic, thousands of Uzbek women and children have fled to the nearby border with Uzbekistan, an AFP reporter witnessed, and which the Red Cross said raised the spectre of a humanitarian crisis.
“Things are getting worse and worse by the hour. We hear reports of tens of thousands of people fleeing the fighting and looting, and heading towards the Kyrgyz border with Uzbekistan,” said Severine Chappaz, the deputy head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) mission in Kyrgyzstan.
The European Commission Saturday also announced that it would send an humanitarian expert to evaluate the situation and determine what aid is needed.
Meanwhile the country where the refugees were heading, Uzbekistan, voiced “extreme alarm” Saturday at the violence, calling it an organized bid to inflame ethnic tensions.
“We don’t want any wars with the Kyrgyz people … but we are suffering from their actions,” an elderly Uzbek woman, who did not give her name, said at a border crossing near the Kyrgyz village of Markhamat.
“They are shooting us, killing us.”
People reached by telephone in Osh described an increasingly violent and chaotic situation, with gunfire echoing across the city amid what seems to be a near-total collapse of central authority.
“The situation here looks terrible. The government doesn’t have any more control over the city. It’s war,” said Andrea Berg of Human Rights Watch, who has been trapped in a guest house in Osh since the fighting began.
Unrest had also spread to the northern capital Bishkek, where one medical official told AFP that 27 people had been hospitalised Friday.
Since April’s uprising, which ousted Bakiyev and left 87 people dead, foreign leaders have warned of the danger of civil war in the strategically vital state, which hosts both US and Russian military bases.
The United States, whose air base outside the capital Bishkek is critical to its war in Afghanistan, has called for a swift return to order.
