UN assessing humanitarian aid needs

UN chief Ban and Kazakh Foreign Minister Kanat Saudabayev, who is the Chairman-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), discussed the Kyrgyz situation over the phone on Saturday.

The UN chief was alarmed at the scale of the clashes, the inter-ethnic nature of the violence, the mounting casualties and the large number of people displaced.

According to latest figures released by Kyrgyz authorities, death toll from the clashes in southern Kyrgyzstan has risen to at least 117, and the number of the injured to over 1,400.

The clashes, the most violent since the ouster of former President Bakiyev in April, mainly involved the Kyrgyz youths and ethnic Uzbeks in the cities of Osh and Jalalabad.

Ban said the United Nations was urgently assessing humanitarian aid needs resulting from the clashes. The UN chief and the OSCE chair agreed that their respective special envoys and that of the European Union, either in, or on their way to Bishkek, would coordinate their response to the crisis.

Bakiyev alleged involvement

The number of people displaced by the clashes was also on the rise. Uzbek media reports said over 30,000 refugees had fled Kyrgyzstan to neighboring Uzbekistan.

The mounting tensions prompted the Kyrgyz interim government to declare emergency and impose curfews in Osh and Jalalabad, with shoot-to-kill powers granted to the troops and police while quelling the unrest.

There were also media reports saying that 15 Pakistani students had been abducted in southern Kyrgyzstan and that one of them was killed. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi confirmed the death of a Pakistani student who had been studying engineering in Osh, but said reports of the other 14 students abducted were not confirmed.

"It is only hearsay which is natural in such a situation," he said.

Former President Bakiyev denied his alleged involvement in the unrest, saying that such accusation was "a brazen lie."

The bloodshed must be stopped, Bakiyev said in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, while blaming the interim government for not "mobilizing necessary resources and localizing the conflict."