An explosion yesterday and a shootout between Uzbek police and alleged terrorists outside the capital Tashkent left several people injured, a news agency and a Western diplomat said, citing law enforcement sources.
The incidents followed a two-day spasm of violence, including two suicide bombings, two assaults on police and an explosion at a bomb-making hideaway which killed 19 people and wounded 26. Uzbek President Islam Karimov blamed the violence on Islamic extremists and said several arrests had been made already.
A police source told a Western diplomat in Tashkent that a man in a car blew himself up yesterday 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 Foreign Ministry and president's office declined to confirm the reports.
The president said that backing for the earlier attacks, on Sunday and Monday, 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 denied responsibility.
Security forces beefed up patrols. Yesterday morning, the road heading out of Tashkent to Karimov's official residence to the north was blocked by soldiers and police. Armored personnel carriers were deployed along the road and empty trucks had been placed in intersections to prevent traffic from entering.
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 together with homemade ingredients for bombs and instructions on how to make them, a Kalashnikov rifle, two pistols, rounds of ammunition and extremist Islamic literature, he said.
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