23 killed in fresh Tashkent fighting

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan -- Police and military clashed with suspected terrorists and 23 people were killed in a third day of violence Tuesday that rattled the Uzbek capital during a sweep to round up Islamic militants, witnesses and authorities said.\nGovernment forces besieged an apartment building near the presidential residence in northern Tashkent, Uzbekistan, for nearly five hours after confronting the suicide bombers. Gunfire and explosions were heard throughout the day.\nAttacks Sunday and Monday had killed another 19 people and wounded 26.\nTuesday's violence was centered in the northern Yalangach neighborhood, near the official home of President Islam Karimov. An Associated Press reporter saw four separate sites of fighting in the district.\nThe Interior Ministry said in a statement read on state-run TV that 20 terrorists and three police were killed in the confrontations that began about 7:20 a.m. Another five police were wounded, the statement said.\nThe statement did not say how long the operation lasted, but witnesses indicated it ended after several hours.\nThe militants blew themselves up with homemade explosives while police tried to arrest them, the ministry said without elaborating. It said the investigation was continuing.\nPolice stopped a small car, and two alleged terrorists jumped out and detonated explosive-laden belts, killing themselves and three police officers and injuring five more policemen, said a National Security Service officer at the scene who declined to give his name.\nIn a separate nearby bombing, neighborhood resident Farida Raupkhajayeva said four women in a red car had driven up to a police checkpoint. One of the women got out of the car and approached a bus that was stopped there, Raupkhajayeva said.\nWhen she ignored a police request to stop, they shot her in the legs, then she set off a bomb, said Raupkhajayeva, 50. The other three women then ran into an apartment building where police began the nearly five-hour standoff with the suspects.\nAn Interior Ministry officer said 16 suspected terrorists had been killed in the apartment building about 100 yards away from the suicide bombing site. Some had been shot by police, but others killed themselves with grenades, said the officer, who refused to give his name.\nAn AP reporter saw five corpses on a sidewalk outside the building. Police investigators and plainclothes security officers with Kalashnikov assault rifles milled about as a medical official put the bodies on stretchers.\nFive men escaped, said a building resident who refused to give her name. She said the women in the car were wearing hijab veils, only revealing their eyes. She said they were speaking to one another in a Central Asian language she could not understand.\nA house several hundred yards away showed signs of heavy fighting, its walls blackened by fire and pocked by dozens of bullet holes. Neighbors who were cleaning up charred books and other debris said four young men had been killed inside the house and none of its regular residents had been home at the time of the shootout.\nIt was unclear whether the four were among the 16 dead that the Interior Ministry officer said had been killed in the siege.\nForeign Ministry spokesman Ilkhom Zakirov said empty trucks and an armored personnel carrier were used to block the route to Karimov's residence.\nSeveral security operations were under way in Tashkent and the surrounding area Tuesday, said Svetlana Atikova, spokeswoman for the prosecutor-general's office, without elaborating.\nAuthorities turned off water, gas and electricity in the district where Tuesday's attacks occurred, and residents were forced to cook their evening meals over wood fires in the streets.\nThe lack of official information led to fear and confusion.\n"I don't understand who is killing whom. We learn about things only from rumors and we panic," said Faya Vaganova, a 47-year-old resident.\nThe violence has left at least 40 dead since Sunday evening in a series of clashes between militants and police, as well as an explosion at a bomb-making hideaway.\nThe violence began Sunday night with a blast that killed 10 people at a house used by alleged terrorists in the central region of Bukhara, Prosecutor-General Rashid Kadyrov said.\nPolice found materials for bombs and instructions on assembling them, a Kalashnikov rifle, two pistols, ammunition and extremist Islamic literature, he said.\nThe two assaults on police took place at a factory Sunday night and a traffic checkpoint early Monday. Three officers were killed.\nThe suicide bombings, carried out 30 minutes apart Monday at a bus stop and the Children's World store in Tashkent's Old City, killed three police and a young child, in addition to the two female attackers, Kadyrov said.