Islamist Insurrection in east Uzbekistan, Islamic trial city epicenter of violence

TASHKENT (AFP): Insurgents stormed key government buildings and freed more than 2,000 prisoners in the eastern Uzbekistan city of Andijan, site of a controversial trial of alleged Islamic extremists, and authorities said armed clashes there left nine dead and 34

Insurgents stormed key government buildings and freed more than 2,000 prisoners in the eastern Uzbekistan city of Andijan, site of a controversial trial of alleged Islamic extremists, and authorities said armed clashes there left nine dead and 34 wounded.

The US embassy in Tashkent meanwhile reported that a suicide bomber had been shot dead outside the Israeli embassy and local media said an attempted attack on the embassy had been thwarted.

Photo Credits:Rediff

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"Insurgents took over the regional administration building and the high security prison, it is not clear who is in charge of the town," Saidjahon Zainobidinov, spokesman of the Appelatsia rights group, told AFP from Andijan.

More than 2,000 inmates were released from the prison and a cinema and theater were torched, he said.

Key buildings were in the hands of the insurgents, including the regional and city administration buildings, the Centrasia.ru Internet site reported, quoting its local correspondent in Andijan.

The bodies of two people lay covered in blood in front of the local office of the national security service and there were reports of continued shooting.

"It's not clear whether they are the bodies of protestors or law enforcement agents," Centrasia.ru said.

Insurgents stormed key government buildings and freed more than 2,000 prisoners in the eastern Uzbekistan city of Andijan, site of a controversial trial of alleged Islamic extremists, and authorities said armed clashes there left nine dead and 34 wounded.

The US embassy in Tashkent meanwhile reported that a suicide bomber had been shot dead outside the Israeli embassy and local media said an attempted attack on the embassy had been thwarted. "The police have disappeared from the streets and the special forces have come to Andijan."

Uzbekistan's hardline president, Islam Karimov, was travelling to the city and was expected to make a statement on state television later Friday, according to a presidential press spokesman.

Nine people were killed and 34 wounded in the clashes in Andijan, Karimov's press service said in a statement quoted by media here and in Russia.

A foreign ministry spokesman in Tashkent told AFP that security forces had brought the situation under control.

The Russian news agency RIA Novosti, quoting the director of the Russian cultural center in Andijan, Pyotr Volkov, said markets, schools and key transport arteries in the city had been shut down.

Andijan lies on Uzbekistan's porous border with Kyrgyzstan in the Ferghana Valley region, an aread where trouble has sporadically flared in the past.

In the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, a spokeswoman for the national border guards' service said the border between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan had been closed.

"Since Friday morning, entry into Kyrgyz territory from Uzbekistan is forbidden," spokeswoman Gulmira Boruayeva said, adding that security had been reinforced along the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border.

Local media reported that several police officers had been taken hostage and that their captors were demanding the resignation of the government and were asking Russia to mediate. Those reports however could not be substantiated independently.

The US and Israeli embassies were attacked with bombs in July of last year, in an attack claimed by a group calling itself the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and that resulted in the deaths of two people and the wounding of several others.

Some 2,000 protestors had gathered outside Andijan's court on Wednesday to demand Islamic extremism charges be dropped against 23 men on trial for allegedly forming a cell of the Akromiya group.

The group is an off-shoot of the better known Hizb ut-Tahrir, which seeks to create an Islamic state out of the Central Asian former Soviet republics.

The protests had been growing in frequency and size in recent days as the trial, begun in February, approaches its conclusion.

Amid a spate of trials of alleged extremists, the case is notable because most of the defendants are owners of small and medium-sized businesses.

Rights campaigners argue that Uzbekistan's courts are closely controlled by Karimov's leadership and that defendants are often tortured.

Karimov is a key ally in the war on terror, having provided US forces with a major airbase near the Afghan border since 2001.

Story Credits:Turkish Press