Terrorism in Tashkent - 03.30.2004

New York Times: More Deaths as Police and Militants Battle

Washington Post: Suicide Bombings, Attacks Kill 19 in Uzbekistan

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New York Times   

More Deaths in Uzbekistan as Police and Militants Battle

By SETH MYDANS

MOSCOW — At least 20 people were reported dead today in bombings and gun battles in Uzbekistan, a strategic ally of the United States that borders Afghanistan.

It was the third straight day of violence there. Bombs and shootings took the lives of at least 19 people on Sunday and Monday in Uzbekistan, in Central Asia, where the United States has maintained a military base since shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. 

An Interior Ministry official told The Associated Press that 20 terror suspects and 3 police officers had been killed. Much of the violence was directed at police checkpoints.

The government said that some of the dead had been shot by police officers and that others had blown themselves up, according to The A.P.; 16 died in a siege at an apartment building.

Officials and witnesses told reporters at the scene that a number of suicide attacks had been carried out by women.

The government immediately blamed Muslim militants with ties to international terrorism.

Human rights groups and independent analysts said they feared a new crackdown in a nation that holds an estimated 7,000 political prisoners.

The organization blamed by the government, Hizb ut-Tahrir, does not have a record of violence and has been the target of repression for years, human rights groups say.

"What we're afraid of now is, are we going to see an intensified crackdown as a reaction to today's events?" said Acacia Shields, the author of a report on religious repression by Human Rights Watch that was released today in Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital.

One analyst with the Carnegie Foundation in Moscow, Alexey Malashenko, said the attack on an American ally had been coordinated and aimed at the same kind of political target as the recent bombings in Spain. He said it remained to be seen whether the armed fighters in Uzbekistan had international connections.

According to The A.P., the Interior Ministry said in televised statement that some of the militants blew themselves up with their own explosives when the police tried to arrest them. The ministry said the investigation was continuing.

An officer at one bombing scene who declined to give his name told the news agency that two terrorists and three police officers were killed when the police stopped a small car and that two of its occupants jumped out and detonated explosives on their belts.

In another incident, The A.P. reported, a woman who got out of a car and approached a parked bus at a police checkpoint was shot in the legs when she refused an order to stop. She then set off a bomb, according to a neighborhood resident, Farida Raupkhajayeva, and the other occupants of the car ran into an apartment building.

The five-hour siege that resulted ended in the deaths of 11 men and 5 women, the news agency said, quoting the Interior Ministry.

Uzbekistan, with a population of 26 million, is the largest of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia. It has been a close ally of the United States despite widespread publicity about human rights abuses that the United States has called "systematic."

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld underscored Uzbekistan's strategic importance on a visit in February, saying relations between the two nations were "growing stronger every month."

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Washington Post   

Suicide Bombings, Attacks Kill 19 in Uzbekistan

By Burt Herman
Associated Press
Tuesday, March 30, 2004

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan -- A series of bombings and attacks linked to Islamic militants, including the first known suicide bombings in Uzbekistan, killed 19 people and injured 26, officials said Monday. 

Prosecutor General Rashid Kadyrov said the blasts Sunday and Monday were connected and were aimed at destabilizing Uzbekistan, which is an ally of the United States in the war on terrorism.

One of the blasts was set off by a female suicide bomber in a children's store near the Chorsu market, the biggest bazaar in the capital, Tashkent, Kadyrov said. Another female suicide bomber detonated explosives at a nearby bus stop. Those attacks killed three policemen and a young child, he said. 

President Islam Karimov said several arrests had been made, but gave no details. Kadyrov said that one suspect had been arrested and that authorities were searching for others, but declined to say how many people might have been involved.

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, Karimov allowed Washington to base at least 1,000 troops in Uzbekistan, a former republic of the Soviet Union that borders Afghanistan. 

Karimov, who ruled Uzbekistan as party leader before the 1991 Soviet collapse and has been president since then, has come under sharp criticism by human rights advocates for repressing political and religious freedoms.

Nevertheless, the United States has dramatically increased aid and retained its rights to base troops in the country.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, "The attacks are yet another example of the importance of continued cooperation against those who would stop at nothing to achieve their misguided goals."

Kadyrov said the attacks began Sunday night with a blast that killed 10 people at a house being used by an extremist in the central province of Bukhara, an ancient city on the Silk Road trading route between Europe and China. 

There were also two attacks on police officers Sunday night and early Monday in Tashkent. Those attacks killed three policemen. 

The suicide bombings near the bazaar were the first reported in Uzbekistan. Kadyrov said the attacks were carried out by Islamic extremists, citing the banned Hizb ut-Tahrir group and followers of the strict Wahhabi sect of Islam.

"The character and method of this act is not common to our people. It was probably exported from abroad," Kadyrov said.

In London, where Hizb ut-Tahrir operates openly, the group denied responsibility.

Karimov's government has acted against Islamic extremists through brutal policies that curb political and religious freedom. The last significant attack, an assassination attempt against Karimov in 1999, led to the arrests of thousands.

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