Soldiers have opened fire on thousands of protesters in an attempt to put down an uprising that began with an armed raid on a prison to free 23 businessmen on trial for alleged Islamic extremism. Witnesses said dozens of people were killed.
As night fell, sporadic gunfire continued to reverberate in the streets of Andijan. It was unclear who held control in the former Soviet state's fourth-largest city of 350,000 people today.
The violence was a sharp contrast to largely peaceful uprisings that sparked regime changes in the ex-Soviet republics of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan over the past 18 months. But President Islam Karimov is regarded as one of the harshest leaders in the former Soviet Union and apparently aims to quickly stifle any perceived threats to his regime.
Uzbekistan, which hosts a US air base and is a minor oil exporter, is frequently denounced by human rights groups and Western governments for torture and repression of the opposition.
Complaints of religious repression were at the heart of the violence: the men on trial were accused of being members of a group allied with the outlawed radical Islamic party Hizb-ut-Tahrir. But their supporters claim they were victims of repression by Karimov's secular government.
