Unrest spreads in Uzbekistan towns

The clashes in the region bordering Kyrgyzstan were the worst since Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

President Islam Karimov's government has denied opening fire on demonstrators as witnesses have claimed, instead blaming Islamic extremists for the violence. The authoritarian government has restricted access for reporters in the affected areas.

But if the reports of more than 700 deaths since Friday hold true, and if Uzbek forces were behind the killing as most reports indicate it would be some of the worst state-inspired bloodshed since the massacre of protesters in China's Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Uzbek authorities are likely to carry out mass arrests of protesters who staged an uprising bloodily suppressed by troops at the weekend, a leading human rights campaigner said yesterday.

"One can now only expect massive arrests and the elimination of those opposing the regime," human rights campaigner Saidzhakhon Zainabitdinov of Uzbek rights group Appeal, told Reuters in Andizhan.

He has estimated troops killed up to 500 people.

Saidjahon Zaynabitdinov, head of the local Appeal human rights advocacy group, said Monday that government troops had killed about 200 demonstrators on Saturday in Pakhtabad, about 20 miles northeast of Andijan. There was no independent confirmation of his claim.

That violence would have come a day after some 500 people reportedly were killed in Andijan Uzbeki-stan's fourth-largest city when government troops put down a prison uprising by alleged Islamic militants and citizens protesting dire economic conditions.

Andijan remained tense on Monday after gunfire continued throughout the night. Residents said government troops were fighting militants in an outlying district, but the claim could not be confirmed.

Alexei Volosevich, an Andijan correspondent for the Fergana.ru Web site, said witnesses told him that militants fired at police from apartment buildings near the prison and that police eventually killed the assailants. There was no word about police casualties.