Nine killed as Uzbek town rebels

ANDIZHAN, Uzbekistan - At least nine people were killed on Friday when rebels in the eastern Uzbek town of Andizhan broke comrades out of jail and seized a key government building, taking 10 police officers hostage.

Around 2000 protesters gathered in the centre of town and there was no sign of police on the streets.

The violence, the worst in the authoritarian ex-Soviet state since bombings in the capital, Tashkent, last year, hit the densely populated Ferghana Valley, one of the poorest and most volatile Muslim regions in Central Asia.

Scores of soldiers poured into the town in jeeps and trucks, but it was not clear who was in control.

Several buildings were ablaze in the centre of Andizhan, and its main local government building was occupied by the rebels. They held 10 police officers, their hands bound, inside the building, littered by broken glass.

The Uzbek Foreign Ministry, which denied the seizure of government buildings, said nine people had been killed and 39 wounded during an attack on a police station and military unit, and said negotiations were underway with the rebels.

The corpses of three civilians, including one woman, and one soldier lay in pools of blood on Andizhan's streets. The soldier, killed by a gunshot wound, was lying face down by an armoured vehicle outside the security services headquarters.

Sporadic automatic gunfire could be heard, and buses and trucks had been parked to block streets leading to the centre.

In Tashkent, guards outside the Israeli embassy shot dead a man who acted in a suspicious manner and ignored orders to stop, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said. Israel Radio said he was a suspected suicide bomber.

Suicide bombers targeted both the Israeli and US embassies in Tashkent last year. The United States has a military air base in Uzbekistan and has hailed Uzbekistan as an ally in its war on terror.

Uzbekistan, an impoverished agrarian state of 26 million, has come under criticism from Western human rights groups for the mass jailing of Muslims who do not subscribe to state-sponsored Islam.

The Andizhan rebels, some of whom broke out of jail where they were being held during a trial on religious extremism, demanded Russian mediation to avert further bloodshed.

"This is the limit. Our relatives started to disappear," one rebel leader, who declined to give his name, told Reuters inside Andizhan's administration building. He said he had been freed from jail.

"We suffered too much, people have been driven to despair, it has to be stopped." The rebel leader, demanding a ceasefire and the release by authorities of Akram Yuldashev, a Muslim theologian, called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to mediate.

The violence comes after a rare protest this week by hundreds of people demanding the release of 23 jailed Muslims who were on trial for religious extremism.

The town in the densely populated Ferghana Valley lies 40km from the border with southern Kyrgyzstan, where protests earlier this year led to a coup in the Kyrgyz capital.

Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov, in power since Soviet days, has defended his hardline policies by saying he is fighting the rise of militant Islam. Russian news agencies reported he was flying to Andizhan on Friday.

Local inhabitants said a group of 35 insurgents had stormed a prison overnight and freed around 60 prisoners.

- REUTERS