UZBEKISTAN: Clashes between Uzbek police and suspected Islamic militants killed at least 20 people yesterday as security forces attempted to recover from the first series of terror attacks since Uzbekistan allied itself with the US after September 11th, 2001, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Moscow
A string of explosions and firefights rattled the capital Tashkent, where police with guns and grenade launchers stormed a building near the residence of president Mr Islam Karimov, and confronted an alleged terror cell.
"Sixteen were killed near Karimov's residence. Four escaped, and were killed further away in the house they had rented," a police officer said.
"That house was filled with explosives," the officer added. "Out of the 20 people killed, there were three women. All of the women were wearing suicide bomber belts, and one of them blew herself up."
Reports said three policemen also died in the raid.
Russian media said eight more guerrillas were killed at a checkpoint close to Mr Karimov's house.
"I don't understand who is killing whom," said Ms Faya Vaganova, a Tashkent resident. "We learn about things only from rumours, and we panic."
Uzbek security officials said several operations were under way in Tashkent after 19 people died and 26 were hurt in an explosion and gun and suicide attacks on Sunday night and Monday morning that the government blamed on "international terrorists".
The violence is the worst to hit Uzbekistan since 1999, when bomb blasts killed 16 people in what Mr Karimov called an attempt to kill him by the banned Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which allegedly fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan and is linked to al-Qaeda.
Pakistani officials said they wounded one of the IMU's exiled leaders, Tahir Yuldashev, in 12 days of fighting this month in a remote region close to its border with Afghanistan.
Uzbek police have also suggested that the Hizb ut-Tahrir group could have planned the attacks, but the avowedly peaceful organisation denied responsibility.
International rights groups regularly accuse Mr Karimov's regime of torturing and sometimes killing political opponents, and using the threat of Islamic extremism to justify the ruthless silencing of all dissent.
Uzbekistan was the first country in ex-Soviet Central Asia to offer support to Washington in its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and US troops are still stationed in the country.