President still elusive

Despite a string of swift twists and turns, President Bakiyev as one of the central figures in this political turbulence who reportedly fled to the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh early Thursday, remained elusive behind the curtains.

The governor of the southern Kyrgyz state of Jalalabad told Ferghana news agency, a Kyrgyz agency registered in Russia, that Bakiyev, who was first elected as president in 2005 and reelected in 2009, had resigned.

However, later on Thursday, the 24.kg news agency published a statement said to have been made by Bakiyev via email that he still refused to step down, while alleging that the opposition should be responsible for the deteriorating situation.

Nonetheless, he admitted in the statement that he was not able to alter the current political situation.

Neither of these two contradictory sayings has received formal confirmation from Bakiyev himself.

Since coming to power in 2005 amid street protests known as the Tulip Revolution, Bakiyev had ensured a measure of stability but the opposition said he did so at the expense of democratic standards while enriching himself and his family.

He gave his relatives, including his son, top government and economic posts and faced the same accusations of corruption and cronyism that led to the ouster of his predecessor, Askar Akayev.

Experts on CIS studies said although the opposition has substantially seized the political power, the risks for a civil war could not be excluded for now, since no one could tell what exactly Bakiyev was doing in the south where his hometown located.

A source told Xinhua that the majority of military armaments of the ex-Kyrgyz government was stored in Osh, where Bakiyev inspected the military troops last month.

Whether Bakiyev would rally his supporters to "recover his lost territory," or whether he would succumb to reality and fade out from the political stage, remained unknown, said analysts.