|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
TASHKENT (AFP) - Some 15 Islamists have launched an assault in the eastern Tashkent region of Uzbekistan, killing two Uzbek troops and taking hostage three others, border guard sources said on Tuesday. Fighting broke out between the Muslim opposition and government troops in eastern Uzbekistan around 120 kilometers (72 miles) from the capital Tashkent, near the Kyrgyz border. Sources said one Uzbek officer and one sergeant were killed in the fighting and four soldiers were taken hostage, although one later managed to escape. There is speculation that the Islamists could have crossed over from Kyrgyzstan after earlier filtering into the country from Tajikistan. Alternatively, they could have come from the Brichmullo region in Uzbekistan, police sources said. Kyrgyz National Security Secretary Bolot Dzhanuzakov told AFP he had received information on Monday morning that a group of 15 Islamists had infiltrated the Palatkhan region in Uzbekistan. The Islamists had killed one Uzbek border guard and taken three troops hostage, he said. They were thought to be from Tajikistan and moving through Uzbekistan towards Kyrgyzstan. The armed Islamist opposition has launched several assaults from Tajikistan into the former Soviet states of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan since the beginning of the month. The assaults are reported to be led by Uzbek warlord Djuma Namangani and his Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan forces who wish to set up Sharia law in the Ferghana valley, which straddles Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Some 100 Islamists crossed into the southern Sukhandarinsk region of Uzbekistan from Tajikistan at the beginning of August, but were surrounded by government troops. The Uzbek defense ministry claimed Tuesday around 80 of the 100 Islamists had been killed and the operation to combat the opposition forces could be completed this week. There has been no official confirmation from Uzbekistan of this latest incursion in the eastern region of the country. The incursions into Central Asia are the second in almost a year and follow an invasion into the southern Batken region of Kyrgyzstan last year by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Uzbek President Islam Karimov blamed the IMU for a series of bomb blasts which rocked the capital Tashkent in February 1999 and which killed 16 people and injured more than 100. In the wake of the bomb blasts, the Uzbek authorities launched a crackdown on Islamic fundamentalists groups, which was criticized by human rights organizations. They warn that repression of religious groups in Central Asia is likely to drive increasing numbers of disaffected youngsters into the arms of warlords like Namangani. |
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
