TASHKENT, March 30: Uzbek special forces stormed a suspected militants' hideout in a Tashkent suburb on Tuesday, leaving at least 19 fighters, three police officials and one resident dead.
Officials and residents said the forces had moved in to end a day-long siege that followed explosions on Monday in the Central Asian state that killed 19 people.
"It has all just ended," a weary-looking soldier said after the operation in Yalangach, three kilometres from one of President Islam Karimov's residences. "Eleven male terrorists were eliminated. Five female terrorists were killed as well. There were three police dead," an interior ministry official said at the scene.
Monday's blasts, two caused by female suicide bombers, raised concern in Washington, which uses an Uzbek airbase for operations in Afghanistan. Islam Karimov's hardline secularist government blamed Monday's attacks on militant groups. One group promptly denied the allegations, saying the government had orchestrated the blasts to justify a crackdown on dissent.
Uzbekistan swiftly sealed its border with Tajikistan, Tajik border authorities said, apparently seeing its neighbour as an infiltration route for militants.
After the siege, five corpses clad in black and identified by police as "terrorists", lay in front of a low-rise apartment block largely untouched in the fighting.
Special forces in helmets and bullet-proof vests rested 100 metres from a brick house where the fighters had held out. The building's annex was smouldering and had lost its roof.
"You just can't imagine how terrible it was," said Lyudmila, 76. "First the special forces turned up like a bolt from the blue, all wearing masks and armed to the teeth. Then we were hastily evacuated and - along with our relatives - heard explosions and the shooting."-Reuters
