Doctor: Uzbek protest toll about 500

Relatives were arriving at School No 15 in Andijan to identify the dead, said the doctor, who spoke by telephone on condition of anonymity.

Another 2000 people were wounded in the clashes on Friday, said the doctor, widely regarded as knowledgeable about local affairs. It was unclear how she arrived at her estimate.

The government has given no clear casualty figures. President Islam Karimov has said 10 government soldiers and many more protesters died and at least 100 people were wounded in the uprising, but witnesses reported hundreds killed.

Search for relatives

Distraught relatives searched for bodies in the smouldering city.

Smoke billowed from a government building that burned during the night and the streets were mostly empty of people and cars. The exception was the mortuary, where relatives came to look for their missing loved ones.

"I have been looking for two days for the bodies of my brothers," said Bakhadyr Yergachyov, clutching his siblings' passports.

"They are neither at the morgue nor at the hospitals. I know
that they had gone to the square to participate in the
demonstrations."

An accurate toll from the violence was impossible to come by, as soldiers guarding the city mortuary and hospitals denied entry to reporters amid a general media clampdown by the autocratic government.

AFP correspondents had seen up to 50 bodies on the streets, and local witnesses spoke of seeing up to 300 dead.

Innocents perished

The bloodshed started early on Friday, when weeks-long demonstrations over a trial of 23 local business people boiled over.

Prosecutors had accused the men of belonging to an outlawed Islamic group, but their supporters said the charges were fabricated.

After armed backers of the accused stormed a local prison to free them, along with some 2000 other prisoners, the military moved into the city that by then was gripped by mass anti-government protests. Witnesses accused the soldiers of firing indiscriminately into the crowd.

"The situation is terrible," Nadyr, a worker at the Andijan market, said on Sunday. "The innocent perished. They placed weapons near the killed civilians to make people think that they are terrorists."

Frustration explodes

Like many, he blamed the repression and corruption of the government in impoverished Uzbekistan for driving people to protest and the ensuing violence.

"We live very badly, I have trouble feeding my children," he said. "This is the fault of the president. It is he who has reduced us to this situation and it was he who ordered the killing of the innocents."

Karimov, a 67-year-old Soviet-era leader in the nation of 24 million who is supported by both Moscow and Washington, has blamed Islamic groups for the violence, and denied that the soldiers were given the order to shoot.

"Their aim is to unite the Muslims and establish a caliphate. Their aim is to overthrow the constitutional regime," Karimov said on Sunday. He said soldiers fired only after being fired upon by the protesters.

Crackdown on Muslims?

Karimov's government, wary of Islamic influences in a country that shares a border with Afghanistan, has moved on what it considers radical groups for years.

Critics say that in practice, this has meant a crackdown on practicing Muslims that has filled the nation's prisons, fuelled discontent with the government and paradoxically has driven many to support the groups opposed by the government.

Although human rights groups have routinely charged Karimov's government with using systematic torture in prisons and police stations, the United States has been mild in its criticism as Uzbekistan houses a US military base and is considered an ally in Washington's war on terror.

Russia, fearful of Islamists as its battle against Chechen insurgents stretches into its 11th year, has also backed Karimov.

After the clashes, Kyrgyzstan, Tashkent's eastern neighbour where mass protests overthrew a Soviet-era government in March, closed its border with Uzbekistan. But on Sunday, authorities said the border crossing at the city of Kara-Suu, which lies in both countries, would be open for five days.

"Uzbek and Kyrgyz authorities decided to open the border," an official with Kyrgyz border authorities said.

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Uzbek security forces have sealed off the centre of Andijan city, where many people were shot dead on Friday.

Troops are on the streets, hunting the leaders of anti-government protests and roads into Andijan are closed.

It is still not known how many people died when soldiers opened fire on demonstrators in the city square. Estimates vary from dozens to hundreds.

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the BBC there had been "a clear abuse of human rights" in Uzbekistan.

Mr Straw said the situation was "serious" and called for more transparency from the Uzbek government.

Figures disputed

The city of Andijan was quiet on Sunday, with most people staying at home.

Relatives are frantically searching morgues, hospitals and the city's streets for those who died.

"I have been looking for two days for the bodies of my brothers," Bakhadyr Yergachyov told the AFP news agency.

"I know that they had gone to the square to participate in the demonstrations."

Armed guards dressed in tracksuits are patrolling the grounds of the hospitals and outsiders, like journalists, are not allowed in.

There have been a few funerals, but many people said the authorities have not released the bodies of all those killed.

Correspondents in Andijan report seeing up to 50 bodies on the streets, though some local witnesses said they had seen as many as 300.

The Associated Press cited a doctor saying 500 bodies had been laid out in a school for identification.

Official figures are much lower.

The BBC's Monica Whitlock said without any independent humanitarian agencies operating in the region, the true figure may never emerge.

Many people are distressed that the state-controlled media have broadcast only minimal news of what happened.

They do not know if the rest of Uzbekistan or the outside world knows or cares.

There are almost no reporters in the city and those with cameras have been ordered out.

Roads into Andijan have been blocked.

Hundreds of people, including women and children, are said to have crossed the nearby border with Kyrgyzstan to a refugee camp on the other side.

At the border, Uzbek authorities were nowhere to be seen, following clashes with locals on Saturday, the BBC's Ian MacWilliam reported.

In the border town of Karasu, he said, local people rebuilt two bridges that had been destroyed by Uzbek forces, and said they intended to resume the cross-border trade they had relied on for years.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov blamed the unrest in Andijan on what he described as criminals and Islamic radicals linked to the banned Hizb ut-Tahrir movement, who wanted to overthrow the government.

Mr Karimov, an ally of both Washington and Moscow's war on terror, has taken a tough line on security since a spate of suicide bombings last year, blamed on Islamic extremists.

But critics say he is using the threat of extremism as a cover to crush dissents.

Many of those who had demonstrated in Andijan said it was poverty and unemployment - rather than political or religious demands - that brought them onto the streets.

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