Kyrgyzstan's interim rulers sent troops today to quell ethnic violence that has threatened their fragile grip on the Central Asian state after the overthrow of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, Reuters reported. Defiant Bakiyev loyalists in the south and lawlessness on the fringes of the capital Bishkek are challenging efforts to restore order after an April 7 uprising that ousted the president and left at least 85 people dead. Belarus said on Tuesday that Bakiyev was now in Minsk, having fled to Kazakhstan last week. Russia said Kyrgyzstan, host to Russian and U.S. military bases, faced anarchy and warned of regional consequences. In a show of strength, the government deployed 300 troops and police to intercept a crowd of several hundred men looting and trying to seize land belonging to Meskhetian Turks and Russians on the outskirts of Bishkek. The clashes, in which five people died overnight, have raised the spectre of ethnic violence in the Muslim nation where ethnic confrontation has otherwise been traditionally rare. One villager in Mayevka, scene of the worst attacks, pointed to blood stains on the ground where a Turk was killed trying to defend his property against 100 Kyrgyz attackers. "Everyone ran away but he put up resistance. So they stabbed him to death with knives and hayforks," said Alik Aliyev, a neighbour and also an ethnic Turk. Kyrgyzstan's Meskhetian Turks are originally from Georgia, but were deported to Central Asia by Soviet leader Josef Stalin. Continued instability in Kyrgyzstan is a worry for Russia and the United States, which earlier curtailed operations at its Kyrgyz military air base supplying operations in Afghanistan. "The government is currently non-existent, it's not there," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday in Moscow. "We count on the interim government to take necessary and sufficient steps (to restore it). Because in this case anarchy will gravely hit the people of Kyrgyzstan and its neighbours." -- SPA
