9 Reportedly Killed During Mass Protest in Uzbekistan

Thousands of people, many of them armed, took to the streets of an eastern Uzbek city today, attacking a prison and freeing the inmates to protest the detention of prominent businessmen on charges of Islamic extremism, witnesses said.

Russian media reports said nine people had been killed and 34 were wounded.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov and other leaders rushed to Andijon, where witnesses reported several buildings ablaze. The city 175 miles east of Tashkent, the capital, near the Kyrgyz border has been the scene of growing unrest.

Shamil Baigin, a Reuters correspondent in Andijon, said, “I have seen three corpses, two male and one woman.... I have seen at least three burnt cars, pools of blood on the pavement, and right now I can hear shooting.”

The 23 detainees are charged with anti-constitutional activity and forming a criminal and extremist organization, but rights activists say the case is part of a broad government crackdown on religious dissent.

Valijon Atakhonjonov, the brother of one of the accused, said security forces fired shots in the air as thousands of people massed in front of the Andijon administration building.

“The people have risen,” he said.

A government spokesman in Tashkent said that administrative buildings remained under government control.

Hours after the Andijon disturbance, police shot and killed a would-be suicide bomber outside the Israeli Embassy in the Uzbek capital, the U.S. Embassy said.