World

Toll Rises In Uzbek Blasts

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

February 16, 1999 / 10:04 AM EST / CBS

Soldiers were guarding key buildings in Uzbekistan's capital Tashkent on Wednesday following six simultaneous bomb blasts apparently aimed at the Central Asian nation's leader that that killed at least 15 people.

The emergencies ministry said the death toll from Tuesday's explosions, which President Islam Karimov said were an assassination attempt on him, rose to 15 overnight and that more than 130 people had been hurt.

Some government buildings in the city center were badly damaged and the central Independence Square was still cordoned off by police.

Soldiers guarded entrances to the headquarters of the Council of Ministers, or cabinet, the national bank and other important buildings.

Witnesses said police had set up roadblocks to entrances into the capital and were checking documents of motorists. They said security at the international airport had also been beefed up.

Government officials said Karimov was working normally.

"I can only say that the president is alive and well and working in the normal, usual manner," said a member of the presidential press service.

Officials said the cabinet was back at work in the damaged council of ministers building.

Karimov, who has hitherto kept a tight grip on Central Asia's most populous state, vowed on Tuesday to hunt the bombers down and punish them harshly.

"We have enough strength to stamp out all these actions," he said. "If necessary we shall cut off hands."

"The aim was to destroy the president and...sow fear and panic among the civilian population," he said.

The explosions shattered Uzbekistan's image as an oasis of relative stability in a turbulent region.

Karimov has mentioned the possible involvement of unspecified "dark forces," and other officials suggested "outside forces" may have been involved.

The former Soviet republic's security minister suggested Islamic groups might have been responsible. Karimov has said such groups want to foment conservative Islamic tendencies among his secular population.

Karimov was Uzbek Communist Party chief before the collapse of the Soviet Union and was later elected Uzbek president.