Fresh photos from Ferghana.ru

Pictures can't lie, right? Well, maybe they can. But this looks like a more balanced report (except for the final sentence) than the last thing I translated off of Ferghana.ru. Here, I'm going to translate just the text and post one photo (it's of a burned-out UAZik, which is a jeep-type vehicle used by police and military forces throughout the former Soviet Union), go here to see all of the photos.

Ferghana Valley: Photo report from an eyewitness on the scene
Ferghana.Ru, proprietary information, 15.05.2005 18:56 MSK

After Andijan, which has already been pacified, there was an uprising in the Uzbek border town of of Karasu (formerly Il'ichevsk). After the collapse of the USSR, this town was divided in two, one portion became part of Kirghizia and one portion became part of Uzbekistan. The cities are divided by the river [which also makes up the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border], and the border is practically unguarded in this location.

There were alarming reports from Karasu about burned buildings and automobiles, about people taken hostages and casualties. Local residents overturned and set afire law enforcement agencies' vehicles, one leader of the local administration was beaten and has been hospitalized. Aside from that, the head of one region has been taken hostage. Eyewitnesses stated that officials were hurt during an attempt to interfere with a mob, which was moving toward the bridge connecting the Uzbek and Kyrgyz parts of the city.

By [Saturday] evening everything calmed down on its own, and the city seemed dead - the population hid itself away in its homes. The reason for this is a banal one: Islam Karimov does not give his opponents even the slightest chance.

Photo © Ferghana.Ru