Interim Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva declared a state of emergency in southern Kyrgyzstan this weekend, after admitting that ethnic pogroms carried out between June 10 and June 14 had claimed 2,000 victims—10 times the previous official death toll. These deaths largely took place when ethnic Kyrgyz mobs attacked minority Uzbek communities in parts of southern Kyrgyzstan, including the cities of Osh and Jalalabad.
On June 17, the UN Humanitarian Office estimated over 400,000 people, or 8 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s population, had fled their homes. This included 300,000 refugees inside Kyrgyzstan, and 100,000 people (not counting children) who left for neighbouring Uzbekistan. Prior to the fighting, the ethnic-Uzbek population of Kyrgyzstan was roughly 700,000, concentrated in the south of the country...
Violence continued yesterday in Kyrgyzstan, as Kyrgyz soldiers with heavy machinery pulled down makeshift barricades that Uzbeks had erected around their neighbourhoods. Two Uzbeks were killed and 25 wounded when police raided the village of Nariman, after dismantling its barricades...
The ethnic violence erupted two months after the overthrow of the regime of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, following mass protests in the capital, Bishkek, against government corruption and a sharp rise in utility rates. After initial attempts to put down the protestors, the Kyrgyz armed forces split, with sections of the army joining protestors in an assault on the presidential palace and other government buildings. Bakiyev was succeeded by an interim government led by Otunbayeva, a Soviet-trained Kyrgyz diplomat with extensive ties to the West...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/kyrg-j22.shtml