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| Central Asia | |
| More on the Uzbek booms | |
| 2004-03-29 | |
| At least 19 people have been killed in a series of bombs and shoot-outs in Uzbekistan which officials blamed on Islamic militants trying to split the Central Asian country from the U.S.-led war against terror. "This has been committed by the hands of international terror, including Hizb ut-Tahrir and Wahhabis," Foreign Minister Sadyk Safayev told a news conference on Monday. Hizb ut-Tahrir, which aims to set up a pan-Islamic state that would include post-Soviet Central Asia, and the austere Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam are both outlawed in Uzbekistan. "That's the hallmark of the terrorist acts we have already witnessed abroad," Safayev said. "Attempts are being made to split the international anti-terror coalition." Hizb ut-Tahrir denied "any involvement whatsoever" saying it "does not engage in terrorism, violence or armed struggle."
In a statement issued in London it said "the finger of blame for these explosions must point at the tyrannical Uzbek regime which has orchestrated such events in the past in order to suppress legitimate Islamic political opposition". The latest wave of violence began near the ancient Silk Road oasis city of Bukhara where some 10 people were killed and 26 wounded in an explosion in an apartment block which happened, officials said, when a "terrorist" was preparing a bomb. Three policemen were killed in overnight gun battles with "suspected terrorists" in the capital Tashkent some 600 km (375 miles) to the northwest, Prosecutor General Rashid Kadyrov said. Then on Monday, two female suicide bombers blew themselves up in separate attacks near Tashkent's biggest bazaar killing three policemen and a child, Kadyrov said. Such methods, he said, were "atypical for our nation and imported from abroad". President Islam Karimov, visibly tense and dressed in a dark suit, told the nation in a televised address that preparations for the "terrorist acts" had lasted at least six months. Investigation of the Bukhara blast found large quantities of bomb ingredients in the building and one man was caught bringing 10 explosive devices into Tashkent, state television said. | |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |