Bishkek, June 11: Twelve people have been killed and more than 100 wounded during ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, a Health Ministry spokesman said on Friday.
“In the Osh region of Kyrgyzstan, the number of dead as a result of the unrest has risen to 12 people,” a ministry spokesman said.
At least 126 people were being treated in hospital for injuries suffered during the fighting, which began overnight in the southern city of Osh, he said.
Kyrgyzstan’s provisional government led by Roza Otunbayeva has struggled to impose order on the volatile Central Asian state since seizing control during riots that ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev earlier this year.
News of the deaths follows a state of emergency and a curfew in southern parts of the country imposed by the government of the former Soviet republic after deadly ethnic clashes.
Armoured vehicles have been sent to the scenes of the violence in a bid to restore order.
Witnesses said brawls had broken out between ethnic Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbek groups in the city, once the stronghold of former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was overthrown in April.
“About a thousand youths armed with batons and stones gathered on Thursday evening in the centre of Osh,” Azamat Ussmanov said.
“They broke shop windows and the windows of residential buildings, burned cars. Several fires broke out in the town.”
Since last April’s uprising, which overthrew Bakiyev and left 87 people dead, 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.
The latest clashes came just a few days after the government lifted the state of emergency in the neighbouring district of Suzak.
In a measure of Kyrgyzstan’s strategic importance, both Russia and the United States have military bases there.
The US base at Manas, outside Bishkek in the north, is a key hub for US air refuelling tanker planes and for the giant transport planes that ferry US troops and supplies to and from Afghanistan.
NATO has increasingly relied on the base as 30,000 additional US forces deploy to Afghanistan.
But the US military presence has irritated Russia, placing Kyrgyzstan at the centre of a big power rivalry for regional influence.
Kyrgyzstan is set to hold Parliamentary Elections in October as well as a referendum on a new Constitution.
—-Agencies