Alwaght- Fatalities were reported injured during last week’s unrest in Uzbekistan’s autonomous province of Karakalpakstan, according to the country’s authorities.
In a statement issued on Sunday, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said protesters had carried out “destructive actions” in the city of Nukus, throwing stones, starting fires, and attacking police.
He acknowledged that people had been killed in the protests, prompting him to abandon plans of constitutional reform.
“Unfortunately, there are fatalities among civilians and law enforcement officers,” Mirziyoyev said during a speech in Karakalpakstan posted on Telegram, without specifying the number and nature of the casualties.
The unrest over planned constitutional changes affecting Karakalpakstan’s status poses the most significant challenge yet to President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s rule since he rose to power from the post of prime minister in 2016, when his long-serving mentor Islam Karimov died.
Karakalpakstan’s autonomy and its right to secede, a day after protesters tried to seize local government buildings in the worst bout of violence in nearly 20 years.
The president also declared a monthlong state of emergency in the northwestern province home to Karakalpaks, an ethnic minority group whose language is closer to Kazakh than Uzbek.
“In [the administrative centre] Nukus, 18 people died as a result of serious injuries received during massive disorders,” the Russian news agency Ria Novosti on Monday quoted Abror Mamatov, an official from the state prosecutor’s office, as saying.
Security forces detained 516 people while dispersing the protesters last Friday but have now released many of them, the national guard press office told a briefing.
