Ethnic Fighting Escalates in Soviet Central Asia

Ethnic warfare in Central Asia escalated Thursday as mobs roamed the capital of Kirghizia, demanding that the local government resign, and armed militants massed on the Uzbek border to avenge the deaths of 48 people killed in the fighting.

Interior Minister Vadim Bakatin told lawmakers in Moscow that the violence, which began three days ago in the town of Osh, has spread to five regions of Kirghizia and spilled over into the neighboring republic of Uzbekistan.

Thousands of ethnic Kirghiz and Uzbeks, armed with spears, stones and guns, gathered along the border and were “standing at the ready, striving to avenge wrongdoings,” Bakatin, the top Soviet law enforcement official, said.

Authorities declared a state of emergency Thursday in Frunze, the capital of Kirghizia. One person was beaten to death, cars were destroyed and thousands of people surrounded Communist Party and government buildings in the city, an official said.

The protesters demanded the resignation of the republic’s leaders within three days and urged Kirghiz to unite and strike back at Uzbeks, the Tass news agency reported.

An estimated 2,000 Uzbeks tried to cross the border from their republic to fight in Osh, but security forces stopped them and sealed all roads between Uzbekistan and Kirghizia, the unofficial Interfax news agency reported.

The unrest was the latest chapter in Soviet ethnic unrest that has claimed hundreds of lives and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes over the last two years.

The sequence of events was similar to other outbreaks in past months in the heavily populated, poverty-stricken region of Central Asia: A local dispute--in this case, conflicting claims by Kirghiz and Uzbeks to private land plots--unleashed pent-up fury and exploded into widespread warfare between ethnic groups.

The Uzbeks and the Kirghiz are predominantly Sunni Muslim ethnic groups.

Wednesday night in Frunze, security forces fired warning shots to disperse groups of youth who vandalized a children’s hospital, a factory and a market, Tass reported.

“Young hooligans split into groups and roamed the city committing stupid and random acts of violence, breaking windows and overturning parked cars,” Arkady Gladilov, a reporter for the newspaper Sovietskaya Kirghizia, said in a telephone interview.

Mobs continued to riot in Frunze throughout Thursday, looting stores and destroying kiosks, Interfax said.

A shopkeeper from the bazaar died Thursday from a beating he received the day before, said Ivan Pavlov, the city party official. He said no further deaths were reported Thursday but that angry crowds had destroyed 34 cars as well as several buses.

A state of emergency and curfew were in effect in Osh, with troops patrolling the streets and sealing off the city.