RUSSIA and China moved to secure citizens and military assets in violence-racked Kyrgyzstan yesterday as the death toll from the country’s worst ethnic clashes in 20 years climbed to 117 and fears grew that the strategically important nation was sliding into civil war.
The Kremlin sent 650 troops to defend military personnel at its airbase near the capital, Bishkek, fuelling speculation it was poised to intervene to end four days of ethnic clashes that have left 1485 people injured and forced more than 80,000 more to flee to neighbouring Uzbekistan.
China also dispatched a rescue plane to evacuate citizens trapped in the southern cities of Osh and Jalal-Abad, where armed gangs have fought pitched gun battles since Thursday, and where mass lootings have left parts of both cities and whole surrounding villages in smoking ruins.
Russia has so far rejected appeals from the Kyrgyz interim government to send troops in to quell the violence, as it did in 1990 during previous clashes between Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbeks over land disputes.
However, it was expected to discuss the possibility of a Russian-led peacekeeping force late last night at a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, a regional security grouping of former Soviet states.
Rumours also circulated that Russian troops were being deployed to guard a hydroelectric power station in the south, freeing up Kyrgyz troops to combat the rioters, but Russia’s embassy in Kyrgyzstan declined to comment.
Both Russia and the US have pointedly called on the interim government, which came to power in an April uprising against the unpopular former administration, to restore order.
Kyrgyzstan is an important gateway to China and Russia, two of the world’s major powers.
The US also has a crucial stake in Kyrgyzstan through its Manis airfield in the country’s north, which has become vital to US military operations in Afghanistan since the Taliban stepped up attacks on NATO supply convoys travelling through Pakistan.
The Kyrgyz provisional government at the weekend issued security forces with “shoot to kill” orders against rioters armed with machineguns, iron bars and machetes who have been targeting ethnic Uzbeks, including women and children, and burning whole villages in the former southern stronghold of ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
Authorities yesterday also announced the arrest of a “well-known person” on suspicion of fomenting the violence.
The identity of the suspect was not disclosed but President Roza Otunbayeva has accused Mr Bakiyev’s family of stirring violence to disrupt a referendum on a new constitution scheduled for June 27 – a charge the exiled former leader has dismissed as “shameless lies”.
In Jalal-Abad, where the worst of the fighting appeared to be centred yesterday, local resident Sergei Kim described gun battles throughout the city.
“There are shootouts going on in the streets. A gang is moving in the direction of the university,” he told local reporters.
The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that emergency services and local authorities were completely overwhelmed and the crisis was “getting worse by the hour”.
The government imposed a 24-hour curfew in the Osh region yesterday, where the violence first erupted on Thursday, and extended emergency rule across the country’s entire southern Jalal-Abad region.
Kyrgyz authorities also sent five planes of soldiers from Bishkek to Jalal-Abad and mobilised all army reservists between the ages of 18 and 50 as well as two plane-loads of emergency supplies including food, clothing and medical equipment.
Refugees flooding into Uzbekistan have accused Kyrgyz police and security officers of siding with the marauding gangs of ethnic Kyrgyz.
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