BBC - "the true [number of dead] may never emerge"

There isn't really anything new in this BBC story, but I think it covers some of the main points well:

Uzbek city sealed after clashes - Last Updated: Sunday, 15 May, 2005, 10:14 GMT 11:14 UK

Uzbek security forces have sealed off the centre of Andijan city, where many people were shot dead on Friday. A BBC correspondent says troops are on the streets, apparently hunting the leaders of anti-government protests.

It is still not known how many people died when soldiers opened fire on demonstrators in the city square. Estimates vary from dozens to hundreds.

Relatives are frantically searching morgues, hospitals and the city's streets for those who died. "I have been looking for two days for the bodies of my brothers," Bakhadyr Yergachyov told the AFP news agency. "I know that they had gone to the square to participate in the demonstrations."

Correspondents in Andijan report seeing up to 50 bodies on the streets, though some local witnesses said they had seen as many as 300.

The Associated Press cited a doctor saying 500 bodies had been laid out in a school for identification. Official figures are much lower.

The BBC's Monica Whitlock said without any independent humanitarian agencies operating in the region, the true figure may never emerge.

This is absolutely true, and it's a far-sighted thing for a reporter to say at a time when her colleagues are all trying to figure out which figure to use. The lockdown of the city can only be for two reasons from the authorities' perspective - to catch any remaining rebels and question/interrogate their family members; and to dispose of the evidence, as much as possible, if there indeed were large-scale fatalities.

Andijan was mostly quiet overnight and on Sunday morning, though residents were reported to be still washing blood and hair from the streets. Smoke billowed from a government building, reporters said, while sniper fire could be heard in the background.

A group of 530 refugees, including women and children, are said to have crossed the nearby border with Kyrgyzstan to a Red Cross camp on the other side. At the border, Uzbek authorities were nowhere to be seen, following clashes with locals on Saturday, the BBC's Ian MacWilliam reported.

In the border town of Karasu, he said, local people rebuilt two bridges that had been destroyed by Uzbek forces, and said they intended to resume the cross-border trade they had relied on for years. [...]

Mr Karimov, an ally of both Washington and Moscow's war on terror, has taken a tough line on security since a spate of suicide bombings last year, blamed on Islamic extremists. But critics say he is using the threat of extremism as a cover to crush dissents.

Many of those who had demonstrated in Andijan said it was poverty and unemployment - rather than political or religious demands - that brought them onto the streets.

The last two paras are not really news, but they do sum up nicely what many have been saying.