No Pakistanis remain in and around violence-hit Osh city in Kyrgyzstan, said Foreign Office spokesperson Abdul Basit on Wednesday. Talking to Express 24/7, he said that all Pakistani students in Osh had been evacuated.
On Tuesday, over two hundred Pakistani students studying in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, were flown home on two C-130 military aircraft specially sent to retrieve them. The students were rescued as ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan surged, displacing thousands.
One Pakistani student, Ali Raza, was killed in the ethnic clashes when he was hit by a stray bullet. His body was returned to his family on Tuesday. Commenting on other Pakistanis in Kyrgyzstan, Basit said he estimated that around 100 or more students were currently studying in the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek.
“I don’t know the exact number,” he admitted, adding that the embassy was still in the process of compiling data.
Basit said that Pakistani nationals in Bishkek were safe and sound as violence had not spread to the capital.
“We do not anticipate any violence erupting in Bishkek,” he said. “Airports are functioning; commercial flights are operating, so we do not envision evacuating Pakistani nationals from the capital.”
“The majority of those students studying in Kyrgyzstan are already in Pakistan for their summer vacations,” he said. “Those that remain in Kyrgyzstan are there to give their final exams.”
Meanwhile, a funeral was held on Wednesday for Ali Raza in his hometown of Shorkot. The funeral was attended by a large crowd of family members and locals.
As the returning Pakistani students settled in at home, new stories about the violence in Kyrgyzstan emerged.
“Some armed rioters attacked our bus near the Kyrgyz airport, but we survived,” said Fazal Hameed as he arrived home in Swat district. “[When we were stranded] we had no food to eat and we couldn’t go to the markets,” Fazal said. He claimed that drinking water had been poisoned.
Wasim Changwani, a student who returned to Dera Ghazi Khan on Tuesday, said the people who initiated the violence were supported by the Kyrgyz army, police and other departments. Changwani is married to a Kyrgyz national who returned to Pakistan with him, and has been issued a three-day visa for Pakistan.
Aid finally began to arrive in Kyrgyzstan on Wednesday, as a plane carrying 800 tents from the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) arrived in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan. With flags at half mast, the shattered country began three days of national mourning for the nearly 190 killed in the violence that erupted last week between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the south of Kyrgyzstan. Neighbouring Uzbekistan received more than 75,000 refugees from the fighting between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz, but is now only accepting sick and wounded people, leaving thousands more desperate to flee marooned on the border.
“What is happening is already a tragedy and it could become a catastrophe,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday.
related story on page 13
Published in the Express Tribune June 17th, 2010.
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