BISHKEK: Police have stepped up security in southern Kyrgyzstan amid fears of retaliation by Islamic radicals for the deaths of five alleged religious extremists, officials said on Monday. The alleged extremists, killed in a shootout with law enforcement authorities on Friday, had been suspected of fatally shooting a police officer and wounding three other people in the southern city of Jalal-Abad. Police have been on heightened alert and border control has been tightened in the Central Asian nation's south to guard against possible attacks by supporters of the alleged extremists, Interior Ministry spokeswoman Aida Bakirova said. Authorities said the five, two citizens of Uzbekistan and three of Kyrgyzstan, were also suspects in terror attacks over the past few years in both countries and were allegedly planning attacks and other actions aimed at igniting ethnic conflict in the volatile Fergana Valley, which Kyrgyzstan shares with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. All three are former Soviet republics.
Over the past week, Kyrgyz police arrested 20 alleged members of the Al Qaeda-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and another banned Islamic group, Hizbut Tahrir, as part of their search for the assailants. Meanwhile, Tajik Interior Minister Khomiddin Sharifov said that 10 men, including three Uzbek citizens, had been arrested in Tajikistan over the past month for trying to recruit new terrorists.