OSH, Kyrgyzstan — The U.N. has found evidence of intent behind the bloody chaos in Kyrgyzstan that has killed hundreds, left the nation’s second-biggest city a smoldering ruin and sent more than 100,000 ethnic Uzbeks fleeing.
The declaration by the U.N. that the fighting was “orchestrated, targeted and well-planned” — set off by organized groups of gunmen in ski masks — bolsters government claims that hired attackers marauded through Osh, shooting at both Kyrgyz and Uzbeks to inflame old tensions.
Kyrgyzstan’s interim leaders have blamed the former president’s inner circle for igniting the unrest — the worst ethnic violence to hit Central Asia in 20 years.
At a hospital near Osh on Tuesday, dozens of wounded Uzbeks lay in corridors and on broken beds, and many said the rampages were premeditated.
“Well-armed people who were obviously well prepared for this conflict were shooting at us,” said Teymurat Yuldashev, 26, who had bullet wounds of different caliber in his arm and chest. “They were organized, with weapons, militants and snipers. They simply destroyed us.”
Over 100,000 Uzbeks have fled for their lives to neighboring Uzbekistan, and tens of thousands more, most of them women and children, were camped on the Kyrgyz side or stranded behind barbed-wire fences in a no man’s land.
The International Committee of the Red Cross had no precise figure of the dead, but spokesman Christian Cardon said “we are talking about several hundred.”
Kyrgyzstan’s interim President Roza Otunbayeva also said the real toll was likely “several times higher” than the official count of 179 people killed, because many victims were quickly buried by their relatives in keeping with Muslim tradition. Nearly 1,900 have been wounded, the Health Ministry said.
Otunbayeva said she talked again with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev about sending in troops, a move Moscow had refused over the weekend. Both the U.S. and Moscow have air bases in Krygyzstan, but they are in the north, far from the rioting.
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