Uzbek troops open fire on protesters

MOSCOW — Troops opened fire on thousands of protesters in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijon during a day of clashes that began Friday with armed fighters storming a prison to release inmates being held on charges of Islamic extremism.

Reports from Andijon indicated that at least several dozen people, and perhaps many more, were killed in the late-afternoon crackdown. Lutfullo Shamsutdinov, an Uzbek human rights activist who was caught up in what he called an ambush of one group of protesters by soldiers and police, said he witnessed about 200 people on the ground who appeared to be dead. Many in that group had been headed toward a military base to try to obtain weapons, he said.

The government of Uzbekistan issued no immediate statement about casualties when troops retook the Andijon city center. Nine people were killed in initial predawn clashes, the government said, during which armed fighters freed an estimated 2,000 to 4,000 inmates from the prison.

Those freed included 23 prominent local businessmen who were on trial after having set up an Islamic charity organization. They were accused of establishing a criminal organization and of religious extremism, a punishable offense in Uzbekistan. Protests over their ongoing trial had triggered the wave of unrest.

The government of President Islam Karimov has characterized the arrest of thousands of alleged Islamic radicals in recent years as part of a battle against terrorism aimed at preserving Uzbekistan as a secular society. Critics including local and foreign human rights activists say authorities have triggered a backlash by engaging in brutal suppression of people guilty of nothing more than fundamentalist religious beliefs.

The United States maintains a military base in Uzbekistan used to support operations in Afghanistan, and the Bush administration considers this Central Asian country an important ally. At the same time, Washington, D.C., has criticized human rights abuses here — although not as severely as activists think it should.

"All the means by which people can express their beliefs and views peacefully have been restricted by this government," said Allison Gill, director of the Human Rights Watch office in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, who spoke by telephone while visiting New York. "So the only thing left is mass unrest or spontaneous uprisings. ... The increasing direness of the human rights situation has led to instability."