Rebellion death toll put at 700

ANDIZHAN - Authorities in Uzbekistan have lost control of a key border town in the eastern Ferghana valley, despite a brutal clampdown that has claimed up to 700 lives.

If reports of more killings are confirmed, the violence would be the most brutal of its kind in Asia since China gunned down hundreds of protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

The hardline Government of Islam Karimov, a key ally of Britain and the United States in the "war on terror", has dispatched an armoured force into the restive east of the country after mass arrests of alleged radical Islamists sparked what appeared to be a popular uprising.

Saidjahon Zaynabitdinov, head of the local Appeal human rights group, said troops had killed about 200 demonstrators on Sunday at Pakhtabad, near the city of Andizhan, where witnesses saw security forces kill up to 500 the night before.

United Nations officials, human rights groups and Kyrgyz border police said thousands of refugees fleeing the violence had made for the nearby border, leading to more unrest. Security forces loyal to the Karimov regime had last night sealed off the town of Korasuv on the border with Kyrgyzstan.

Heavily armed police had set up roadblocks and officials admitted they had lost control of the town, which is a lifeline into the more affluent and liberal Kyrgyzstan.

"There is no police in there and there is no civil administration there," a police official said. Andizhan itself has been turned into a ghost town. The city of 300,000 was suffocated by a huge military presence, backed up by police on every street corner.

Outside the prison where 23 businessman had been held in the incident that sparked the protests, a wrecked car sprayed with bullet holes showed the scale of fighting.

Armoured personnel carriers, tanks and Army trucks underlined the sense of a city under siege, while lorries loaded with soldiers carrying automatic rifles rumbled through.

The headquarters of the regional administration, where the protesters gathered in support of the insurrection, was still blocked by soldiers.

The blackened upper storeys of what had been the nerve centre of Karimov's authority, pock-marked with bullet holes, bore witness to the fighting.

Karimov has sought to blame the violence on radical Islamists trying to overthrow the secular Government. However, rights groups and independent observers, including former British envoy Craig Murray, said Karimov was leading a brutal police state, propped up by the arbitrary detention and torture of Muslim dissidents protesting at the desperate economic conditions.

Washington has remained silent on the deaths of hundreds of civilians in Uzbekistan. The White House has instead expressed concern over reports that Islamic extremists may have been released during the chaos that led to Saturday's massacre.

- INDEPENDENT