Interim leader: Kyrgyz violence likely kills 2,000

The United Nations said as many as 1 million people may need aid in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, including the potential number of refugees, internally displaced, host families and others that may suffer in one way or another from the unrest. UNICEF spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume said the figure was an estimate to help agencies plan how much aid they need to prepare. She says the actual number of people in need may be turn out to be higher or lower.

The aid agencies say those uprooted by the unrest most urgently need food, water, medicine and shelter. Otumbayeva arrived early on Friday by helicopter in the central square of Osh, a city of 250,000 where the violence began late last week. Parts of the city have been reduced to rubble by roving mobs of young Kyrgyz men who burned down Uzbek homes and attacked Uzbek-owned businesses. The United Nations estimates that 400,000 people fled the country’s south. “We have to give hope that we shall restore the city, return all the refugees and create all the conditions for that,” she said.

Otumbayeva optimistic

She insisted goodwill between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks would end hostilities. Up to 100,000 people have crossed the nearby border into neighboring Uzbekistan where they are getting food and water in specially created camps. Thousands more remain camped out in squalid conditions on the Kyrgyz side of the border, unable to cross due to Uzbek restrictions. US Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake, who was visiting a refugee camp in Uzbekistan about five kilometers (3 miles) from the Kyrgyz border, called for an investigation into the violence and said he was working to ensure the refugees would be able to return home safely.

At one camp in Uzbekistan, in a former polymer plant near the Kyrgyz border, Blake was swamped by throngs of crying refugees, mainly older woman and children, complaining they were desperate to return home but too fearful of fresh attacks to do so.

“We ... believe there should be an investigation,” he said, an Uzbek interpreter at his side.

Blake, who was accompanied by two-dozen-strong security detail, appeared to be conducting his own probe, asking the refugees if they thought the violence had been organized, as the United Nations and Kyrgyz authorities have suggested. “Yes, of course it was organized, it all happened so unexpectedly,” answered one refugee, Nasiba Mamyrdzhanova, from Osh. “We didn’t have any weapons, only sticks,” said the refugee, wearing a traditional Uzbek long-sleeved dress with a bright headscarf.

Kyrgyz authorities have said the violence was sparked deliberately by associates of Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the president who was toppled in April in a bloody uprising. The UN has said the unrest appeared orchestrated but has stopped short of apportioning blame.

Ethnic Uzbeks on Thursday accused security forces of standing by or even helping ethnic-majority Kyrgyz mobs as they slaughtered people and burned down neighborhoods. Col. Iskander Ikramov, the chief of the Kyrgyz military in the south, rejected allegations of troop involvement in the riots but said the army didn’t interfere in the conflict because it was not supposed to play the role of a police force.