KARA-SUU (Kyrgyzstan), May 19: Uzbek troops reclaimed control on Thursday over a key town on the volatile Uzbek-Kyrgyz border and reportedly arrested local Islamist leaders, as the Uzbek government worked to contain social unrest after a violent military crackdown.

For the first time since Sunday, when angry protesters set fire to government buildings chasing out federal authorities, Uzbek border guards appeared at the main border crossing point at Kara-Suu, a town that straddles the border separating Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

“Uzbek border guards have been back since 6:00am (0600am PST),” one border guard on the Kyrgyz side of the town told AFP as helicopters circled overhead.

Residents from the Uzbek portion of the town, questioned in Kyrgyzstan, said that returning government forces had arrested Bakhtiyar Rakhimov, who is believed to head pro-Islamist forces on the Uzbek side of the town, along with two of his associates. No bloodshed was reported.

It was not clear whether Rakhimov had led the protests that erupted on the Uzbek side of the town, Karasuv, after the deadly military crackdown in the eastern Uzbek town of Andijan last Friday.

Opposition activists have said that up to 745 people had been killed in Andijan after soldiers called to disperse an anti-government rally fired indiscriminatly on the crowd. Karimov, a 67-year-old Soviet-era leader who has stamped out opposition in the country of 24 million people, has faced unprecedented international pressure over the violence.

On Wednesday, Britain, the European Union and the United Nations called for an international inquiry into the unrest. It was the most pointed criticism from Washington directed at Karimov in years — the United States considers Uzbekistan a key regional ally in its war on terror and has tempered its criticism of Karimov since he agreed to host a US air base on his soil after the September 11 attacks.

The Andijan clashes have also emboldened some Karimov opponents inside Uzbekistan, where public criticism of the president is rare and reports of systematic use of torture in prisons and police stations are widespread among rights groups.

On Thursday, a handful of activists demonstrated in front of the Russian embassy in Tashkent, protesting what they said was biased coverage of the Andijan clashes by Russia’s state-controlled television.

“There are no Islamists, there are not terrorists there, people rose up there. Not only in Andijan, but throughout the Fergana Valley and elsewhere, they are in poverty and they can wait no longer. This is the breaking point.”—AFP