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Uzbek police surround terror suspects
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-03-30 16:48
Uzbek forces laid siege to a group of terror suspects near the president's
residence outside the capital Tuesday, the government said, following an
explosion and reports of a shootout between police and militants that left
several people injured.
Soldiers block a
road leading out of the Uzbek capital Tashkent on Tuesday, March 30, 2004.
Special police units were tracking alleged terrorist remnants on the
outskirts of the city after two days of violence in Uzbekistan including
the country's first-ever suicide bombings. [AP
Photo]
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The troops cornered an unknown number of terrorists northeast of the capital
Tashkent — not far from the official residence of President Islam Karimov — and
were trying to "expose and exterminate" the militants, Foreign Ministry
spokesman Ilkhom Zakirov said.
The operation began Tuesday morning, but Zakirov had no details on how many
troops were involved in the sweep. Soldiers and police used empty trucks and an
armored personnel carrier to block vehicles along the road to Karimov's
residence.
The sweep followed a two-day spasm of violence that began Sunday evening,
killing 19 people and wounded 26, including two suicide bombings — the country's
first-ever such attacks — two assaults on police and an explosion at a
bomb-making hideaway.
Karimov has blamed the violence on Islamic extremists, and said several
arrests had been made.
The president said Monday that backing for the attacks might have come from a
banned radical group that has never before been linked to terrorist acts — Hizb
ut-Tahrir, or the Party of Liberation. The group has denied responsibility.
A police source told a Western diplomat in Tashkent that a man in a car blew
himself up Tuesday after being chased by police, and that a shootout had erupted
at an apartment that authorities raided to capture three alleged suspects.
Several people were injured in the violence, the ITAR-Tass news agency
reported, citing police sources.
The U.S. Embassy in Tashkent also said an explosion took place near a police
checkpoint Tuesday on the road heading out of Tashkent toward the president's
official residence. An embassy annex office remained closed and visa operations
were suspended, but other business went on as usual.
Security was also beefed up across the city Tuesday, with soldiers on patrol
and hotels deploying metal detectors and not allowing vehicles to approach.
The violence began Sunday night with a blast that killed 10 people at a house
used by alleged terrorists in the central region of Bukhara, Prosecutor-General
Rashid Kadyrov said Monday.
Police found 50 bottles with homemade ingredients for bombs and instructions
on how to make them, a Kalashnikov rifle, two pistols, ammunition and extremist
Islamic literature, he said.
The two assaults on police took place at a factory Sunday night and a traffic
checkpoint early Monday. Three officers were killed.
The suicide bombings, carried out 30 minutes apart Monday at a bus stop and
the Children's World store near the Chorsu bazaar in Tashkent's Old City, killed
three policemen and a young child in addition to the two female attackers,
Kadyrov said.
They were the first suicide bombings ever reported in the five Central Asian
nations once ruled by the Soviet Union, which also include Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
The violence went unmentioned on Uzbekistan's tightly controlled state-media
until Monday evening.
Karimov alleged the attacks were planned six to eight months in advance and
had been originally set to take place around the Central Asian new year holiday
Navruz, which falls on March 21, but that heavy security prevented them. The
planning and money required to carry out such attacks also indicated they had
outside support, he said.
Uzbek authorities have accused the Hizb u-Tahrir of being a breeding ground
for terrorists and have sought to have Washington label it a terrorist group.
Uzbekistan's tiny opposition, banned by Karimov's authoritarian regime from
working openly, fears that this week's attacks will deepen a widespread
crackdown against dissent and independent Islamic mosques. Thousands have been
jailed, drawing international condemnation.
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