Protests rock Uzbek border town

Protests rocked this town on the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border yesterday as Tashkent struggled to quell unrest in the wake of a deadly crackdown that has sparked unprecedented Western criticism of the authoritarian Uzbek regime.

Some 200 demonstrators, mostly women, carried banners demanding freedom for a self-proclaimed Islamist leader as well as a popular local wrestler in the town of Karasuv, which straddles the border between the Central Asian former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Several hundred soldiers and riot police stood by as the protestors blocked the road leading to a bridge to the Kyrgyz side of the town, over the Sharikh Khansai canal.

Defying growing calls Friday for an international inquiry into the bloody suppression of anti-government riots, President Islam Karimov's regime rounded up suspected participants in the unrest, which human rights activists say killed hundreds.

Witnesses and rights activists have reported continuing arrests in Andijan, the eastern city at the centre of the unrest. A senior Uzbek police official said Friday that police in the capital Tashkent had arrested several people on suspicion of involvement in the Andijan riots.

The protestors tried to persuade traders crossing the bridge to join them, one young man throwing a rock at a car and smashing a window, witnesses said.