OSH, Kyrgyzstan (AFP) – Deadly gun battles raged in the Kyrgyzstan city of Osh where bodies littered the streets Monday as ethnic violence escalated and Uzbekistan raced to cope with a massive refugee influx.
Amid sporadic gunfire, charred corpses lay unattended in an ethnic Uzbek shop destroyed by petrol bombs, fires burned and Osh streets were littered with shell casings under an acrid, black pall of smoke.
Several days of clashes in Osh have left at least 117 dead and 1,000 wounded, according to an official toll. Some estimates have said 100,000 people have crossed the border into Uzbekistan.
Kyrgyzstan is of key importance to the major powers as both the United States and Russia have military bases there and a there is growing international concern over the unrest.
Bodies lay on streets across Osh where buildings smouldered while the burned carcasses of cars, trucks and felled trees were scattered on a road where intense fighting took place.
Shocked residents said the violence would have repercussions for generations to come. "We will never live together again," said Akbar, a local ethnic Uzbek man wandering the streets in Osh carrying a hatchet.
Intermittent gunfire was heard in Osh on Monday while further to the north in the city of Jalalabad the violence was reportedly still in full swing.
"The situation got worse in Jalalabad," the deputy chief of Kyrgyzstan's interim government, Temir Sariyev, told reporters in Bishkek.
"There are local clashes and it is not yet possible fully to contain the situation. Armed groups are breaking through here and there and this is linked to the fact that our forces are insufficient" to control the situation.
The violence exploded Friday in Osh when ethnic Kyrgyz gangs began attacking shops and homes of ethnic Uzbeks, igniting tensions between the two dominant ethnic groups in the region that have simmered for a generation.
Experts stress however that despite the clear ethnic component of the violence, it is also directly related to political turmoil in the highly clannish ex-Soviet republic where a revolt -- against a president whose power base was in the south -- occurred just two months ago.
The violence has sent tens of thousands of refugees, most of them ethnic Uzbeks but also a large number of Tajiks, flooding over the border into Uzbekistan where authorities have scrambled to get help to them.
AFP is the only Western media outlet permanently accredited in Uzbekistan and an AFP reporter in the eastern Khujaobad district said aid workers were racing to provide care for tens of thousands of refugees.
"We have settled 2,500 refugees here since Saturday," said Ikromiddin Valiyev, an official in charge of organizing refugee accommodation on the grounds of a factory in the area.
"We are receiving aid from all the regions of the country. Yesterday, 200 trucks with tents and other supplies arrived from Samarkand" in southeast Uzbekistan, he said.
Estimates on the numbers of refugees that have flooded into Uzbekistan in recent days after fleeing the carnage in Kyrgyzstan vary, but several officials say the total could top 100,000.
Uzbek military helicopters flew along the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border while military personnel were seen setting up field kitchens and medical facilities in other districts in eastern Uzbekistan.
Kyrgyzstan's interim president, Roza Otunbayeva, on Saturday appealed to Russia to send military assistance to help quell the violence.
The Kremlin agreed to send humanitarian aid but has so far said conditions are not in place for any involvement of Russian forces in restoring order.
Russia leads a regional security body, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), grouping ex-Soviet republics in Central Asia that was reportedly considering deployment of a rapid-reaction force to the region.
Both Russia and the United States maintain military facilities in Kyrgyzstan outside of Bishkek and Russian on Sunday dispatched paratroopers to reinforce security at its base.
EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said Monday she was "very concerned" at the unrest in Kyrgyzstan. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed alarm at the violence on Sunday.
