OSH, Kyrgyzstan – Some 400,000 people have been displaced by ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, the United Nations announced Thursday, dramatically increasing the official estimate of a crisis that has left throngs of desperate, fearful refugees without enough food and water in grim camps along the Uzbek border. Ethnic Uzbeks interviewed by Associated Press journalists in the main regional city of Osh said that ethnic Kyrgyz men had sexually assaulted and beaten more than 10 Uzbek women and girls, including some pregnant women, and children as young as 12, on a single street during the rampages that erupted last week. Resident Matlyuba Akramova showed journalists a 16-year-old relative who appeared to be in a state of shock, and said she had been hiding in the attic as Kyrgyz mobs beat her father in their home in the Cheryomushki neighborhood. At some point, Akramova said, the girl came downstairs to bandage her father's head and another group of attackers noticed her and sexually assaulted her in front of her father. Members of the Kyrgyz community have denied accusations of brutality and have accused Uzbek of raping Kyrgyz women. Eyewitnesses and experts say many Kyrgyz were killed in the unrest between the majority Kyrgyz population and minority ethnic Uzbeks. But the majority of victims appear to have been predominantly Uzbeks, traditional farmers and traders who speak a distinct but separate Turkic language and have traditionally been more prosperous than the Kyrgyz, who come from a nomadic tradition. Odinama Matkadyrovna, an Uzbek doctor in Osh, said there were probably more cases of rape, but many victims were reluctant to speak out about their experience because of fear to dishonor their families in view of local traditions. "Our mentality is such that they conceal (cases of rape)," she told the Associated Press Television News. UN Humanitarian Office spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said an estimated 300,000 people had been driven from their homes but remain inside the nation of 5.3 million people. She said there are now also about 100,000 refugees in neighboring Uzbekistan. The last official estimate of refugees who fled the country was 75,000. No number of internally displaced has been available. Kyrgyzstan's government has accused the country's deposed president of igniting long-standing ethnic tensions by sending gunmen in ski masks to shoot members of both groups. The government, which overthrew President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in April, accuses the former leader of deep corruption and says that he and his supporters were attempting to shake official control of the south and reassert their grip on the Afghan heroin trade in the area. Some Uzbek witnesses have alleged that the Kyrgyz mobs were aided by military and police. Col. Iskander Ikramov, the chief of the Kyrgyz military in the south, rejected the allegations of troop involvement in the riots but said that the army didn't interfere in the conflict because it was not supposed to play the role of a police force. Ole Solvang, a Human Rights Watch researcher investigating the violence in Osh, said Kyrgyz troops were standing 220 yards (200 meters) from the Cheryomushki neighborhood when the looting and killings started but didn't interfere.
