Uzbek Blasts Hit U.S. and Israeli Embassies
By Shamil Baigin
TASHKENT (Reuters) - Simultaneous explosions struck the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Uzbekistan as well as the state prosecutor's office in the capital Tashkent Friday, killing at least two people and wounding five.
Reuters Photo
The three blasts at about 5 p.m. (8 a.m. EDT) in Uzbekistan, a U.S. ally in the war on terror, appeared to have been triggered by suicide bombers, almost certainly on foot.
The action appeared clearly coordinated, as the trial proceeded in Tashkent of 15 people on charges of trying to overthrow the ex-Soviet state in connection with attacks in March that killed nearly 50 people.
The three buildings are spread across the modern city of two million people located in the heart of arid Central Asia. Uzbek President Islam Karimov, visiting Ukraine's Crimea peninsula, was due to return home overnight, local officials said.
Israeli ambassador Zvi Cohen said two people had died outside the Jewish state's embassy.
"A bomb exploded at the entrance to the embassy," he told Israel Radio. "It is not clear yet whether it was a suicide bomber or an explosive device. Two local workers were killed."
Cohen said he and three other Israeli officials were in the building at the time along with two local security guards. Security had been stepped up since the earlier bombings.
SUICIDE BOMBER MOST LIKELY
An Israeli security source said officials suspected a suicide bombing by Islamic militants, though it was too early to say for certain. The source said one of those killed in the security screening area was an Uzbek security guard and the other may have been an Uzbek worker.
Party of a body lay outside the embassy and windows were shattered in single-story houses opposite.
The U.S. embassy, reached by telephone from Moscow, said there were no known injuries in the blast outside the building's compound.
Russia's Interfax news agency quoted an embassy official as saying it had been caused by a suicide bomber with explosives attached to his waist.
Uzbek Interior Minister Zakirdzhon Almatov said five people were injured at the prosecutor's office, where a man blew himself up in the lobby.
Police sealed off the building and fire trucks and ambulances were lined up outside, flanked by police carrying automatic weapons.
The defendants in the mass trial were said to have been followers of the extreme Islamist al Qaeda organization.
Uzbekistan was a staging post for the U.S. operation that ousted the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan (news - web sites) and has allowed Washington the use of an air base.
The administration of President Karimov, who unabashedly uses tough methods to root out Islamic extremism, stands accused by rights groups of widespread human rights violations.
(additional reporting by Jerusalem bureau) |
