ARMED men fought government forces near the city of Andijan in eastern Uzbekistan yesterday as witnesses reported that up to 600 people were killed when troops had opened fire on demonstrators.

Rebels killed several troops in the border town of Tefektosh as thousands of refugees tried to flee over the closed frontier to Kyrgyzstan to escape the worst violence in Uzbekistan since its independence in 1991.

In Korasuv, a town 50km (30 miles) east of Andijan, government offices and police cars were set alight. Protesters forced the mayor to reopen two river bridges that link the Uzbek and Kyrgyz sectors. The crossings had been closed by the authorities two years ago.

In Andijan, which has 300,000 residents, people gathered at School No 15 to identify hundreds of victims of Friday’s shootings in the city, while others cleared the streets of blood and body parts.

Although reports were confused, a doctor said that 500 bodies were laid out side by side in the school. Another 100 bodies lay in a nearby college, according to the Animokur organisation, a local charity.

The Russian state-run Channel One television broadcast footage from Saturday of uniformed men carrying a body to a lorry, and a dead man lying face-down, his head between the bars of a fence.

Uzbek troops fired into a crowd of about 3,000 protesters on Friday after armed rebels had stormed a jail, freed prisoners accused of Islamic extremism and occupied the local government headquarters. “They shot at us like rabbits,” one teenager said.

The protesters had demanded the resignation of President Karimov, who has ruled the Central Asian nation since Soviet times. Mr Karimov has blamed the uprising on Islamists and said that ten government soldiers and “many more” protesters were killed, although the Government has not released any official death toll.

Critics said that the President had ordered the crackdown to prevent protests from snowballing into a revolution similar to one in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan two months ago.

The violence presents the US with a diplomatic dilemma: it has hailed Mr Karimov as an ally in the War on Terror since he allowed US Forces to use an airbase for operations in Afghanistan. However, human rights groups have repeatedly accused the US and Britain of muting their criticism of abuses in Uzbekistan.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, called on Uzbekistan yesterday to allow the Red Cross and foreign observers in to check casualty reports. “The situation is very serious. There has been a clear abuse of human rights, a lack of democracy and a lack of openness,” he told BBC radio.

Mr Straw also said he was “extremely concerned by reports that Uzbek troops opened fire on demonstrators . . . I totally condemn these actions and I urge the Uzbek authorities to show restraint in dealing with the situation and look for a way to resolve it peacefully.”

The Uzbek Government reacted angrily to his comments in a letter to David Morgan, the British Ambassador to Tashkent. “How did Jack Straw know that the law enforcement agencies started shooting demonstrators if nothing of this kind ever happened?” the letter said, according to the the Russian news agency RIA.

Russia, concerned about revolutions in former Soviet republics that have eroded its influence, backed Mr Karimov. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, said in Vienna that the unrest in Andijan had been a provocation “staged by groups similar to the Taleban”.

The violence was triggered by the trial in Andijan of 23 businessmen accused of belonging to Akramiya, a group which the Government says has links to Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a banned movement seeking to create an Islamic state in Central Asia. Rights groups say Mr Karimov has had thousands of political opponents jailed by accusing them of being Islamic extremists.

The issue was highlighted by Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who was recalled after accusing Britain and the US of tacitly condoning Uzbek rights abuses.

Mr Murray writes in The Guardian today: “The bodies of hundreds of pro-democracy protesters in Uzbekistan are scarcely cold, and already the White House is looking for ways to dismiss them . . . Karimov remains in power. The White House will be happy. That’s enough for No 10.”

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