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| Central Asia |
| US and Israeli Embassies in Uzbekistan Bombed |
| 2004-07-31 |
| From The Washington Post Three nearly simultaneous explosions ripped through the capital of Uzbekistan late Friday afternoon in apparent suicide attacks outside the heavily guarded U.S. and Israeli embassies and the headquarters of the Uzbek chief prosecutor. The bombings killed at least two Uzbek security guards employed at the Israeli Embassy in the capital, Tashkent. The violence occurred as a trial began this week for 15 people accused in a wave of attacks in Uzbekistan last spring that killed nearly 50 people, most of them the attackers, in the first known cases of suicide bombings in recent times in Central Asia. Hours later, in Pakistan, a bomber blew himself up next to a car carrying Pakistan's prime minister-designate, Shaukat Aziz, killing at least six people. .... Uzbek state television reported late Friday that the attacks in Tashkent injured nine people, but a presidential aide said later by telephone that five people may have been wounded. ... The U.S. Embassy said in a statement that no American personnel or local embassy employees were wounded in the attack ... Israeli officials also confirmed there were no casualties among their embassy staff. One of the Uzbeks killed was an embassy security guard, and the other was the personal security guard of the Israeli ambassador, the presidential aide said. "The terrorists wanted to explode themselves inside the buildings, but they were not allowed in," the Uzbek interior minister, Zokirjon Almatov, told the Russian news agency Interfax. At the prosecutor's office, he added, "the terrorist only managed to get as far as the entrance." ... "We think the chances are extremely high that it was a suicide bomber," said Mark Sofer, a senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official. He said the two guards were killed near the embassy's entrance and that an Uzbek police officer may also have been killed. .... In recent years as many as 7,000 Uzbeks have been imprisoned for their religious or political beliefs, according to the State Department and several human rights groups, and Karimov has effectively banned opposition political groups from open activity. Earlier this month, the U.S. government suspended $18 million in military and economic aid to the Uzbek government because it could not certify that any improvements had been made concerning human rights or political freedoms, steps that Karimov has repeatedly promised the United States. ... |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |