In Uzbekistan, Families Caught In a Nightmare

The Karimovs were sympathetic to the speakers' calls for greater economic opportunity. Abdulsalam, 36, had worked at a bakery owned by one of the 23 businessmen. When the man was arrested several months ago, the bakery closed and Abdulsalam lost his job. The Karimovs had been scraping by ever since, feeding their children soup without meat and making do with old clothing.

So they joined enthusiastically in crying out " Azatlik! " -- Uzbek for "Freedom!" -- after every speech.

Mohammed Mavlanov, a Kyrgyz food wholesaler who trades in Andijon, recalled wandering by in the afternoon. "There were thousands of demonstrators," he said. "About half of them were women and children."

It was a sunny, warm day, and the crowd was suffused with a sense of optimism as speakers said that they had been in touch with President Karimov and that he would be coming soon to listen to their concerns.

But late in the afternoon, dark clouds began to gather and a helicopter began circling, Mavlanov recalled.

Sensing concern in the crowd, speakers urged the demonstrators to stay in the square, promising that no harm would come to them. But soon afterward, several minivans and trucks packed with security officers arrived, and the men began firing on people from the vehicles' doors and windows.

"People were yelling, 'Get down! Get down! They are shooting!' " Zukra Karimova recalled.

"Stay together or you'll get shot," several refugees recalled the speakers yelling into the microphone. The throng tried to break out of the square along a major avenue, the refugees said, with the men trying to push the women and children toward the center of the group for protection. But as they edged toward the avenue, they spotted an armored personnel carrier packed with soldiers firing toward them over a pile of bodies that had accumulated in front of it, survivors recalled.

By this time, it had begun to rain, and the crowd dispersed in a panic down every available side street.

"From the sky there was a storm of rain, from the streets a storm of bullets," Mavlanov recalled. "You could see blood all over the asphalt, and women and children falling down all around like grass when you cut it with a scythe."

Mavlanov recalled feeling a searing pain in his arm. He had been shot. A stranger helped bandage him with a piece of rope.

He and others frantically knocked on doors, pleading for shelter. Only one woman opened her door, Mavlanov said, taking in those who could not walk.