BISHKEK, Uzbekistan, May 14, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – With the number of people killed by security forces yet unclear, hundreds of Uzbeks took to the streets on Saturday, May 14, to protest President Islam Karimov's iron-fisted rule while others were fleeing the country to neighboring Kyrgyzstan.

“Down with Karimov who fires on his own people,” the crowd shouted as troops on a nearby bridge occasionally opened fire, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“These protesters are just simple people. They are not extremists. Our salary is ridiculous and we haven't been paid for five months,” one man told AFP while fleeing the square amid the shooting.

“This is a protest for our social rights.”

An Uzbek man accompanied by three of his sons meandered through the crowd with purpose in his eyes but aimlessness in his steps.

“I've lost my 15-year-old son,” he said. “He went outside to play yesterday and I haven't seen him since. I'm looking everywhere for him.”

The protests were triggered by the trial of 23 local businessmen on charges of religious extremism, a claim observers say used by the government to crack down on activists.

The unrest also feeds on long pent-up anger in Andijan regarding the treatment of prisoners, poverty, unemployment and other social problems, according to the BBC.

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.

Due to a media blackout and with foreign journalists ordered out, no independent verification of the number of deaths was immediately possible.

Though unofficial sources put the death toll at 50, several witnesses confirmed seeing hundreds of corpses on the streets of the eastern city of Andijan.

“I have seen 200 bodies. It's a real war,” Abdul-Vakhid Gasurov told AFP Saturday.

Another resident, who only gave his first name, Bakhodir, claimed to have seen more than 300 bodies near the mayor's office.

“Everything is covered in blood,” he said.

Russia's Interfax news agency quoted the head of a Uzbek human rights group, Apelyatsiya, as accusing the authorities of shipping out large numbers of dead people in trucks.

“This morning at dawn the bodies of the dead were taken out in five vehicles -- three Zil trucks, one Ural and one bus. They were all full with bodies,” said Saidzhakhon Zainabitdinov.

Another witness said that many of the dead included children and women.

“But the TV does not show these. These are innocent people, women and children, on the ground,” he told AFP.

In another development, thousands of Uzbeks were crammed at the border with neighboring Kyrgyzstan trying to flee the clashes.

“More than 600 Uzbek citizens, including several injured, broke through the Kyrgyz border near the Kyrgyz town of Suzak,” a Kyrgyz official told AFP.

“These refugees are receiving first aid medical treatment.”

A border official in the region of Och said thousands others were stranded at the border, adding the Uzbeks had rebuilt a destroyed bridge linking the two former Soviet republics.

Local Kyrgyz, many of them of Uzbek origin, crossed the border into Uzbekistan to express their support for the revolution, AFP said.

Karimov has been criticized for mass jailing of Muslims who do not subscribe to state-sponsored Islam. (Reuters)

President Karimov on Saturday blamed what he called “Islamic extremists” for the violence, denying having ordered security forces to open fire on demonstrators.

“According to our information, there is a link to Hizb ut-Tahrir,” he said, referring to an Islamic organization reportedly seeking the creation of an Islamic state in the Central Asian former Soviet republics.

“There is a linkage in preparation and support on the part of that movement,” Karimov told a press conference in the capital Tashkent.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, however, denied the accusations.

“The blame for violence has to be with Islam Karimov and his oppressive regime which has tortured and jailed thousands of innocent victims,” spokesman Imran Wahid said in statements carried by Reuters.

“The blame for the violence should not lie with people who live under oppression,” he added.

Wahid, however, said the group was very active in Uzbekistan.

“We want to undermine and overthrow the regime of Islam Karimov by peaceful means.”

The European Commission has voiced concern at the escalation of violence in the Central Asian republic, partly blaming the government's disregard for human rights.

“The commission is closely following the situation in Uzbekistan. We are concerned by the outbreak of violence,” a spokesman for the EU executive told AFP Saturday.

“The situation is also the result of the government's lack of regard for human rights and the rule of law,” the spokesman said, calling for the crisis to be “resolved through dialogue and reconciliation, not by force.”

The Kyrgyz revolution, which followed recent popular revolts in Ukraine and Georgia, is widely believed to have emboldened the people of Uzbekistan.

Riots swept Kyrgyzstan earlier this year, resulting in the toppling of its Soviet-era leader Askar Akayev.

But Atef Motamed, an Egyptian expert in Central Asian affairs, excluded a possible repeat in Uzbekistan.

He told IslamOnline.net that regime change in Central Asia has two main rules.

“First, opposition movements must not be Islamic-leaning because Islamists in the region are seen by the key players like Moscow, the US and other regional powers as extremists,” he said.

The expert recalled that opposition groups which managed to topple the regimes in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan had Christian or liberal leanings.

“The second rule is that the non-Islamist opposition in Uzbekistan – which is very weak – must prove capable of protecting western and Russian interests in the country on a par with the guarantees and assurances given by Karimov,” said Motamed.

He stressed that Karimov and the US administration “are on good terms as he supported the US invasion of Afghanistan and helped the Americans chase down Al-Qaeda operatives”.

The expert cited, in as a case in point, the medium-size American military base in the Uzbek region of Khan Abad on the borders with Turkmenistan.

He said Uzbek Islamists just wanted to rally for the release of prisoners and protest police torture of their imprisoned supporters.