Death Toll Put at 107 in Kirghizia Ethnic Strife : Soviet Union: Gangs of Kirghiz and Uzbeks continue to hunt each other down in one of the region’s worst outbreaks of violence in two years.

The death toll from ethnic fighting has risen to more than 100 people in Soviet Central Asia, officials said, in what is becoming one of the worst outbreaks of violence there in the last two years.

A spokesman at the military headquarters at Osh in the republic of Kirghizia, where the conflict between Kirghiz and Uzbeks broke out Monday, said Saturday that 107 people had died and 436 had been injured.

“Gangs of Uzbeks and Kirghiz are hunting each other down in the outlying regions, although the town is calm,” he said.

The official Tass news agency described the atmosphere in the region around Osh as “exceptionally tense,” and it said 348 buildings had been burned down, including 255 houses and 31 state buildings.

A town council official in Osh said local leaders were urging Uzbeks and Kirghiz to stop the fighting.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said earlier Saturday that the death toll had reached 83 but would undoubtedly rise.

“The figure is not final. It is likely we will find more bodies in the burned-out houses. . . . Also, we found seven deserted cars on one of the roads leading out from Osh. We do not know what happened to the drivers and passengers,” he said.

Kirghizia’s leaders declared Monday an official day of mourning for those killed in the unrest, the government daily Izvestia reported.

President Islam Karimov of neighboring Uzbekistan said Friday that the ethnic violence is spreading into his republic, and he imposed a state of emergency in a number of districts around Andizhan, on the border between the two republics.

Karimov asked Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev for help to prevent skirmishes from turning into full-scale conflicts.

Extra Interior Ministry forces and regular troops have been flown into the region. A Soviet Interior Ministry spokesman said Saturday that the border between the two republics was now sealed.

The violence, which started in Osh after a quarrel about allocation of land, is one of the worst outbreaks of the unrest that has killed hundreds of people in Soviet Central Asia.

An explosive mix of ethnic groups and years of pent-up nationalism, inflamed by high unemployment and squalid living conditions, have created a tinderbox in the region.