In Uzbekistan, Families Caught In a Nightmare

Refugees Tell of Flight From Government Troops

KARA-SUU, Uzbekistan, May 17 -- The Uzbek troops were shooting again, this time from rooftops, and Zukra Karimova's 58-year-old father fell to the ground as he ran, a dark bloodstain spreading along his thigh. "Go on without me or you'll be killed, too!" he shouted as she bent down to help him, she recalled.

Karimova made a quick decision to obey -- and went racing on, with her husband, mother and 12-year-old son.

It was early Saturday morning, and the family was fleeing a brutal crackdown that had begun in the central square of their home city of Andijon, where troops opened fire on thousands of people who had gathered to protest the authoritarian government of their Central Asian country.

Karimova made it across the border to Kyrgyzstan, but she has no idea whether her father did -- or her son, who became separated from her in the confusion. On Tuesday, she sat with about 500 other refugees in a tent camp set up near the Kyrgyz city of Suzak, burying her face in her hands as she contemplated the bloodletting that the Uzbek government says claimed 169 lives -- 32 troops and the rest "terrorists." Human rights activists have put the death toll as high as 750, most of them civilians. The U.S. government estimates that 300 people were killed.

"I don't know where my son is," said Karimova, 32, sobbing. "I just don't know."

Karimova and the others at the camp appeared to be among the relatively few Uzbeks who made it out of their country. Several of their number had been seriously wounded and taken to a hospital in Suzak.

The refugees' accounts of the violence and their escape, which could not be independently verified, paint a picture of a peaceful crowd of ordinary families unexpectedly caught up in a nightmarish ordeal.

The unrest in Andijon began when supporters of 23 prominent local businessmen who had been prosecuted on charges of religious extremism raided a military base and seized weapons. The supporters then stormed the prison where the businessmen were being held and freed them along with as many as 2,000 other prisoners.

On Saturday, Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan since it gained independence in 1991 with the breakup of the Soviet Union, said subsequent street protests were orchestrated and largely attended by Islamic extremists.

But refugees said in interviews that many people who turned out and were killed were ordinary citizens like themselves.

Zukra Karimova and her husband, Abdulsalam, said they learned of the demonstration early Friday when organizers began talking over a loudspeaker set up in front of a monument in the central square, near the two-room house where the couple live with their four children.

Intrigued, they wandered into the square with their oldest son, Ali, and Zukra's mother and father.