Andijan, Uzbekistan: A plane carrying the first foreign aid for refugees, who fled the violence in Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan, arrived on Wednesday in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan, officials said.
The aid came a day after the Red Cross said that several hundred people have been killed in the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan since rioting began last Thursday.
The plane carried supplies from The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), officials from the local branch of the emergency situations ministry told an AFP correspondent at the airport.
The first plane was carrying 800 tents to house the refugees and two more UNHCR flights were expected to bring more supplies later in the day.
A number of trucks were standing by at the local airport for immediate distribution to the refugees.
Uzbek officials have said that over 75,000 people have fled the ethnic fighting between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan.
Hundreds killed
The Red Cross said that several hundred people have been killed in the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan since rioting began last Thursday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross says it has no precise death figures, but spokesman Christian Cardon said "we are talking about several hundreds" of people killed.
The southern part of the impoverished nation has been convulsed by days of rioting targeting minority Uzbeks, which has left the country's second-largest city, Osh, in ruins and sent tens of thousands of Uzbeks fleeing toward the border with Uzbekistan.
Kyrgyz violence could spread
Violence in southern Kyrgyzstan could spread to the capital Bishkek and another region of the north, the deputy leader of the interim government, Almazbek Atambayev, said on Tuesday.
"The events in Osh were so premeditated ... that now we should await some sort of provocative acts in Chui region and Bishkek, but we are well prepared for this," Atambayev told reporters.
UN calls for democracy
The United Nations is urging Kyrgyzstan not to allow deadly ethnic unrest to derail a key referendum and subsequent parliamentary elections.
UN representative Miroslav Jenca said in Bishkek on Tuesday that a June 27 referendum on a new constitution - and parliamentary elections in October - must go ahead despite the troubles.
Mob attack
Kyrgyz mobs on Monday burned Uzbek villages, slaughtered their residents and stormed police stations seeking to loot more weapons as ethnic rioting engulfed new areas in southern Kyrgyzstan.
The interim government in the impoverished Central Asian nation ordered troops to shoot rioters dead but even that has failed to stop the spiralling violence that has left more than 100 people dead and about 1,250 wounded since Thursday night.
Too afraid
Doctors and rights activists say that official toll is far too low because wounded minority Uzbeks are too afraid of being attacked again to go to hospitals.
The riots are the worst violence since former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was ousted in a bloody uprising in April and fled the country.
The Uzbeks have backed the interim government, while many Kyrgyz in the south support the toppled president.
Thousands of Uzbeks have fled in panic to the nearby border with Uzbekistan after their homes were torched by roving mobs of Kyrgyz men. Some Uzbek women and children were gunned down as they tried to escape, witnesses said. Fires set by rioters have destroyed most of Osh, the country's second-largest city, and looters have stolen most of its food.
Triumphant crowds of Kyrgyz men took control of most of Osh on Monday while the few Uzbeks still in the city of 250,000 barricaded themselves in their neighbourhoods. Fires continued to rage across Osh and occasional shots were heard. Police were nowhere to be seen.
Osh bloodshed: Pakistani killed
One Pakistani student has been killed and around 15 reportedly taken hostage in Kyrgyzstan's riot-stricken southern city of Osh, foreign minister Shah Mahmoud Quraishi said yesterday.
At least 100 people have been killed — 72 in Osh alone — in gun battles over the past three days in the Central Asian state's worst ethnic violence in two decades.
"One student has been killed and there are reports that 15 have been taken hostage for ransom. We are trying to confirm these reports," Quraishi told Reuters.
