Kyrgyzstan buries uprising victims as nation mourns

KYRGYZSTAN: Kyrgyzstan held funerals Saturday for 16 victims of bloody riots this week that saw the opposition seize control of the Central Asian nation as toppled President Kurmanbek Bakiyev fled south.

With the future of the strategic country still uncertain, the United States suspended all flights carrying troops to support operations in Afghanistan from its Manas base outside the capital Bishkek.

Some 7,000 people gathered in a sea of flowers at a cemetery outside the capital for Saturday's mass burials, as the country mourned 79 people who died in the uprising during which security forces opened fired on protesters.

The victims' coffins, swathed in bright red Kyrgyz flags, were laid out as the crowd sang traditional songs and chanted prayers.

Key figures of the new government were dotted among the throng of mourners at the mountain Atta-Beiit cemetery some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Bishkek.

Interim chief Roza Otunbayeva promised the weeping families of the victims justice for their loss.

"The regime became the enemy of the people when it opened fire on its patriots, the best sons of the nation, and we - we will do our best to install a just power in Kyrgyzstan," she told the crowd.

Her deputy prime minister Omurbek Tekebayev also renewed opposition pledges for a "true democracy" in the ex-Soviet state.

"We will build a true democracy or else the souls of those dead will never forgive us," he told the crowd.

The interim government suspects Bakiyev of trying to restore his five-year grip on power and rallying support in his native south of the country.

However, Janibek Karibjanov, a special envoy from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), told journalists in Bishkek that the new government on Friday had made its first attempt at negotiating with Bakiyev - a claim the government quickly denied.

Otunbayeva has urged the toppled president to take her offer of safe passage out of the Central Asia nation in exchange for his resignation - while it still stood.

Also Saturday a planned rally was cancelled in Jalalabad, the multi-ethnic stronghold of the ousted president where supporters of Bakiyev's regime were to gather.

The head of the local council of elders, Adych Kochkorov, told a crowd of around 300 people in the city that the rally had been delayed because of a day of mourning across the nation.

Despite ongoing tensions in Bakiyev's stronghold, a measure of calm had returned Saturday to the impoverished country of 5.3 million people - its economy in shambles following the popular revolution. Bishkek, Sunday, AFP