A man blew himself up in a residential area of Uzbekistan's capital on Wednesday, police said, bringing a third day of violence to a bloody close but scepticism mounted over official explanations.
A police officer said a man in the city's old district southwest of the center had blown himself up at 8pm, causing no other casualties, after the security services surrounded a one-storey clay building where he lived.
The incident was the latest in a series of blasts and shoot-outs to hit Tashkent and the ancient Silk Road city of Bukhara, killing at least 43 people since Sunday night.
A plain clothes security official at the scene of Wednesday's blast denied any hostages had been taken by the man, as reported earlier by Russian television.
The Russian news agency Itar-Tass said 30 people have been detained in the last 48 hours under anti-terrorism laws.
The police officer, who did not give his name, said police had acted on a tip-off from a detainee when they surrounded the house.
Earlier, on the streets of the Uzbek capital, few appeared surprised at the violence and some were openly sympathetic to those behind the attacks.
"The Uzbek people have had enough. I think this was aimed against the police, not ordinary people," said Guzal, 20, a student wearing sunglasses and strolling in high heels along an avenue in central Tashkent.
"I've heard people saying they support this [violence] every time I get on the bus," she said, refusing to give her family name.
"We don't know anything," said Kolya, a 53-year-old unemployed bricklayer. "People are angry. Whoever did these things lacked something, people have nothing to eat."
Police corruption, serious poverty and the lack of a legal political opposition have fostered resentment. Uzbekistan keeps its economy going mainly thanks to high cotton and gold prices.
"This is a kleptocratic government with an economic policy that is causing deepening poverty," Britain's Ambassador Craig Murray said. "Combined with strong repression and a lack of political freedom, it is radicalizing the population."
President Islam Karimov, whose motorcade travels along closed streets with a carload of troops aiming semi-automatic weapons at pedestrians, has defended his hardline stance against Muslim dissidents by pointing to the former Taliban government in neighboring Afghanistan.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell is soon to decide on whether to "certify" Uzbekistan on economic and human rights progress, without which financial aid will be blocked.
He offered assistance to Uzbekistan in a phone call to Uzbek Foreign Minister Sadyk Safaev, a State Department official said.
Human rights groups, which estimate that Uzbekistan has locked 7,000 Muslim dissidents in prisons where torture is allegedly practised, say they fear the blasts will serve as a pretext for further crackdowns against non-violent Muslims.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS