Kyrgyz Leader Orders Election Investigation

President Askar A. Akayev on Monday ordered a probe into alleged election violations that have triggered demands for his resignation and weeks of increasingly violent protests across this former Soviet republic.

Police, security forces and local officials in Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s second-largest city, fled Monday in the face of about 2,000 demonstrators, some armed with clubs and Molotov cocktails, who seized the governor’s office, regional police and security stations and the airport.

On Sunday, protesters in Jalal-Abad, like Osh located in the south, freed 70 detained demonstrators from police headquarters, set the building on fire and occupied the governor’s office. About 15,000 people rallied peacefully there Monday, a local government spokesman said.

Akayev has ordered the Central Election Commission and the Supreme Court to investigate the balloting, telling them “to pay particular attention to those districts where election results provoked extreme public reaction ... and tell people openly who is right and who is wrong.”

Protests against Akayev began after parliamentary elections Feb. 27, and swelled after the opposition and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe charged that subsequent runoffs were flawed. The government denies the charge.