KYGYSTAN’S interim government has announced a state of emergency and a curfew in the south of the country, after fresh ethnic violence in the region.
“Clashes and exchanges of fire between groups of youths took place overnight Thursday to Friday in Och and the neighbouring districts of Karassu, Arava and Uzgen,” government spokesman Farid Niyazov said.
The authorities sent armoured vehicles to the scenes of the violence in a bid to restore order, he added.
“A state of emergency has been declared in Och and these districts from June 11 until June 20,” said Niyazov.
Interior Minister Bolot Cher and Defence Minister Ismail Issakov had both travelled to Och, he added.
Witnesses said brawls had broke out between ethic Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbek groups in Och, which was the stronghold of the former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was overthrown in April.
“About a thousand youths armed with batons and stones gathered Thursday evening in the centre of Och,” one local, Azamat Ussmanov, said.
“They broke shop windows and the windows of residential buildings, burned cars. Several fires broke out in the town,” he added.
A local police spokesman said they had sent several units out to try to restore order.
Since last April’s uprising, which overthrew Bakiyev and in which 87 people were killed, foreign and international leaders have warned of the danger of civil war in this strategically important country.
But the provisional government has struggled to establish order over the impoverished state amid ethnic clashes in the volatile south and a corruption scandal involving several high-ranking interim government officials.
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