Gangs Rampage in Uzbek Region as Violence Spreads

Uzbek gangs looking for Meskhetians and armed with automatic weapons, iron bars and firebombs rampaged through the Fergana region of Soviet Uzbekistan, and the violence threatened to spread to neighboring areas, Soviet media said Saturday.

A military commander said gangs were “conquering” new districts in the region, 125 miles southeast of Tashkent, the Uzbek capital. There are fears that the violence could spill over into the neighboring republic of Tadzhikistan.

At least 80 people have been officially reported dead and more than 800 injured after a week of some of the worst rioting in decades. The trouble began last weekend when Uzbeks attacked the local Meskhetian minority.

11,000 Flee Homes

At least 11,000 Meskhetians, a Turk-related minority deported to the area by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1944, have fled their homes and are living in a refugee camp outside Fergana, guarded by troops, the Soviet media said.

The violence in the Central Asian republic appears to have broadened into widespread rioting and a complete collapse of law and order, even though more than 7,000 Interior Ministry troops were sent in when local police lost control.

A curfew is in force in much of the region. About 1,800 firearms have been confiscated, and more than 600 houses and at least 100 cars have been burned.

“According to the head of the Interior Ministry troops, Col. Gen. Yuri V. Shatalin, the situation remains unpredictable,” the Communist Party daily Pravda reported from Fergana.

“Thugs are ‘conquering’ new districts, moving toward the border of the region,” Pravda said. They threaten to move on to the neighboring Andizhan and Namangan regions of the republic and on to the Leninabad region of Tajikistan, the newspaper added.

Pravda said that 119 soldiers and 51 police officers were injured and that at least one soldier was among the dead.

The worst of the latest violence was in the town of Kokand, where Soviet television reported Friday that 100 people had been shot--some possibly killed--in a rampage by an armed mob.

Pravda said truckloads of bandits tried to enter the town and attacked police stations in search of arms but were repulsed.

The situation remained extremely tense, it said, adding: “The traces of atrocities are everywhere. The streets are full of stones, the debris of burned-out houses and burned-out cars.”

Telephone links between Moscow and major cities in the Fergana region, home to about 1.8 million people, were down Saturday and the area is closed to foreign correspondents.