Soldiers Fire On Uzbek Protesters

Soldiers opened fire on protesters in eastern Uzbekistan on Friday and killed at least three after demonstrators stormed a jail to free 23 men accused of Islamic extremism, witnesses said.

Protesters hit the ground as the soldiers started shooting outside the administration building. An Associated Press reporter saw 10 people lying on the ground, apparently hit. Moments earlier, participants in the rally said three people had been killed.

Soldiers continued shooting as they surrounded approximately 4,000 protesters.

One man could be heard sobbing, "Oh, my son! He's dead."

Outrage over the trial of the 23 defendants exploded into broader unrest, with thousands of people swarming the streets and clashing with police. Earlier in the day, at least nine people were killed and 34 wounded, witnesses and officials said.

Protest leader Kabuljon Parpiyev told The Associated Press that as many as 50 people may have been killed over the course of the day. Two of the dead were children, said Sharif Shakirov, a brother of one of the defendants, and he said 30 soldiers were being held hostage because they were shooting at demonstrators.

President Islam Karimov and other top officials rushed to the eastern city of Andijan, where the government insisted it remained in control despite the chaos, though it blocked foreign news reports for its domestic audience.

Andijan is in the volatile Fergana Valley, where Islamist sentiment is high, provoking tensions with the secular government that tolerates only officially approved Muslim observances.

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which is linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban and which the United States has put on its list of terrorist groups, fought for establishment of an Islamic state in the valley in the late 1990s. Concerns are high that Fergana could be a flashpoint for destabilizing wide swathes of ex-Soviet Central Asia. The United States is using an Uzbek air base far from the valley to support the anti-terror campaign in nearby Afghanistan.

Neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan — former Soviet republics like Uzbekistan, which also share the Fergana Valley — sealed their borders.

Uzbeks in recent weeks have shown increasing willingness to challenge their authoritarian leadership in protests, apparently bolstered by the March uprising in neighboring Kyrgyzstan that drove out President Askar Akayev and by the so-called Orange and Rose Revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia.

The trial against 23 Islamic businessmen accused of terror ties and extremism has inspired one of the largest public shows of anger over alleged rights abuses by the government. Parpiyev said that the protesters' main demand was the release from prison of the group's mentor, Akram Yuldashev.

"The people have risen," said Valijon Atakhonjonov, a brother of another one of the defendants.

Protesters stormed the prison overnight, seizing weapons, officials and witnesses said. The 23 businessmen were freed in the jailbreak, said defendant Abduvosid Egomov, 33. The protesters also got hold of weapons when they attacked a military unit.

Thousands of protesters massed on the square outside the local administration building, where a podium was erected. Protest organizers, some with Kalashnikov automatic rifles strapped across their chests, took turns addressing the crowd through a microphone.

"We want to be allowed to work and do our business without hindrance," Parpiyev, the 42-year-old leader of the protest, told the AP.

Many of the men wore square black embroidered skullcaps, while some were in the white skullcaps favored by observant Muslim Uzbeks. The protesters had posted their own guards on the perimeter of the square.

A nearby theater and cinema were burning. Two dead bodies laid splayed near the square — one with a stomach wound, another burned. Several military helicopters circled overhead.

Egomov, pale and thin, was holed up in a local government compound overrun by protesters who were breaking up pavement stones to reinforce a metal fence surrounding the compound in efforts to stave off security forces. Some were also preparing Molotov cocktails.

"We are not going to overthrow the government. We demand economic freedom," Egomov told The AP.

"If the army is going to storm, if they're going to shoot, we are ready to die instead of living as we are living now. The Uzbek people have been reduced to living like dirt," he said.

Parpiyev said Interior Minister Zakir Almatov had called him in the morning and heard the protesters' demands. He initially agreed to negotiations, but later called back and said the offer of talks was off, Parpiyev said.

"He said 'we don't care if 200, 300 or 400 people die. We have force and we will chuck you out of there anyway,"' Parpiyev quoted the interior minister as saying.

Karimov's office, however, issued a statement saying that negotiations were underway but that the protesters refused to budge.

"The guerillas, hiding behind women and children and captured hostages, are not willing to make a compromise to solve the conflict," the statement said. "The representatives of the public society, relatives and interested parts also joined the negotiations."

Shakirov, the brother of one of the businessman defendants, told the AP that the jailbreak was triggered by news that security services on Thursday had started rounding up people involved in a sit-in outside the court building where the trial was taking place.

The trial defendants, arrested in June, are accused of being members of the Akramia religious group and having contacts with the outlawed radical Islamic party Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Authorities accuse Hizb-ut-Tahrir of inspiring terror attacks in Uzbekistan last year that killed more than 50. The group, which claims to eschew violence, denied responsibility.

Akramia unites followers of Yuldashev, a jailed Uzbek Islamic dissident accused of calling for the overthrow of the predominantly Muslim country's secular government — an accusation he denies. The group's members are considered the backbone of Andijan's small business community, giving employment to thousands of people in the impoverished and densely populated Fergana Valley.

In the capital, Tashkent, a man carrying fake explosives was shot and killed outside the Israeli Embassy Friday morning. Officials identified the man as an unemployed ethnic Russian with a history of mental illness.