She had not seen them since they fled the Uzbek city of Andijan, 20 miles (32km) to the west, after security forces shot dead hundreds of anti-government protesters there on Friday.

For four tense days she waited for them, hardly daring to leave her home. Then she heard about the 540 fugitives from Andijan who had made it to a refugee camp across the Kyrgyz border.

Yesterday, when roadblocks around Andijan were finally lifted, she slipped out with four grandchildren and made her way there, changing cars several times.

“There was shooting again last night. Everyone’s sitting at home scared. There are only a few people on the streets,” Mamlaket, 53, said as she waited to be allowed into the camp near the Kyrgyz village of Karya Darya.

“I was waiting for the men to come back. Who is going to take care of us now?” As Uzbekistan’s Government struggles to maintain calm after Friday’s massacre, Kyrgyz officials and aid workers are preparing for a flood of people like Mamlaket escaping Andijan and heading across the border. Kyrgyzstan’s human rights commissioner has said that up to a million people could flee if the crackdown continues.

At the same time, Uzbekistan is pressuring Kyrgyzstan to return the refugees, some of whom it says are convicts released when armed men stormed a prison in Andijan on Friday. And once the Uzbek Government re-establishes control of border towns, it is unlikely to allow any more eyewitnesses of the bloodshed in Andijan to leave.

Foreign diplomats given a three-hour tour of Andijan yesterday complained that they were not allowed to talk to any local people or see the site of the killings. “Can we not see some people?” David Moran, the British Ambassador, complained as the group was deposited back at Andijan airport.

Kyrgyz authorities, by contrast, gave foreign journalists unfettered access to the 540 Uzbek refugees, which included about 100 women and a dozen children. Huddled around 10 canvas tents in a gully overlooking the border, they described the massacre in consistent detail.

Nematjon Akrumov, a 48-year-old carpenter, said that he was addressing the crowd on the square when soldiers opened fire from two trucks and an armoured personnel carrier. “At first we thought they were shooting into the air. Then I saw they were firing on the people with machineguns and sniper rifles. They shot women, they shot children — it didn’t matter,” he said.

His younger brother, Khamidjan Akrumov, 41, was shot through the heart as he ran away, he said. Refugees’ estimates of the death toll varied from 300 to 1,000, but they all angrily rejected the Government’s claim that 169 people were killed, most of them “bandits”.

“We saw with our own eyes — they shot old people, women and children,” Ibadak Sadirova, a 54-year-old housewife who was in the crowd, said. Her nephew, Abdul Boki, 25, was shot dead on the square, she said.

When the shooting finished, a group of 500 to 600 fugitives immediately fled the city, walking for 10 hours until they reached the Kyrgyz border. Uzbek guards there opened fire on them on Saturday morning, killing at least eight people, refugees said.

Avaz, a 30-year-old baker, was shot in the upper arm. “The guards were waiting for us. They shot from all sides. They shot unarmed people,” he said, his arm in a sling.

Finally the refugees persuaded local officials to allow them to cross. They now face an uncertain future.

Kyrgyz authorities gave them identification cards yesterday, the first step in a process to decide if they qualify for political asylum or extradition.

All denied any links to the gunmen who stormed government buildings on Friday. But many had close links to the 23 businessmen whose trial for Islamic extremism triggered the protests, and clearly sympathised with those who freed them. They also denied that the defendants belonged to Akramiya, a branch of the banned Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

They had simply angered the Government by setting up a network of private businesses, which employed many in Andijan and donated money to community projects, they said.

“They were doing well, helping poor people and kids. The Government couldn’t stand that they were doing what it had failed to,” Mr Akrumov, who worked in one of their factories, said.

He, like many of the refugees, said they hoped that the Kyrgyz Government — long the most liberal in the region — would be sympathetic. If it allows them to stay, they face years of economic hardship and separation from their friends and families.

But returning to Uzbekistan, they insist, would mean certain death. “If I go to the other side, they would shoot me down and you could watch it through binoculars,” said Avaz, pointing to the Uzbek side of the border.

“If the Government of Kyrgyzstan allows us to stay they will be saving our lives.”

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• 'Radio Rancid' is scourge of Obama
• French gulp as global warming alters wines
• Colton, the barefoot boy bandit, outfoxes sheriffs