ALMATY (Dispatches) - At least 25 Kazakh police have reportedly been killed and more than 740 others injured as authorities in the ex-Soviet country try to quell unrest triggered by a sharp rise in fuel prices.
A state of emergency has been declared in the country’s largest city, Almaty, where the protesters set fire to the mayor’s office and stormed other political offices. Similar protests are taking place in other provinces.
In a televised address on Friday, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said constitutional order has mostly been restored in the Central Asian nation as security forces appeared in control of the streets in the country’s main city of Almaty.
Up to 20,000 “bandits” had attacked Almaty and were destroying state property, Tokayev said. “Local authorities are in control of the situation. But terrorists are still using weapons and damaging the property of citizens,” he further asserted. “Therefore, counter-terrorist actions should be continued until the militants are completely eliminated.”
The country’s interior ministry also announced that 26 “armed criminals” had been “liquidated” and more than 3,000 were detained, adding that 18 police and national guard officers had been killed since the protests began early this week over a sharp hike in fuel prices.
This is while fresh gunshots could still be heard in the morning near the Almaty’s central square, where troops and protesters had battled through much of the previous day, according to international news outlets.
Protests, which are rare in the relatively stable former Soviet nation, began over rising fuel prices. But the rallies have since morphed into violent anti-government riots.
At the request of Tokayev, Russia has sent “peacekeeping forces”. They arrived on Thursday.
The peacekeeping forces of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) sent to Kazakhstan will total about 2,500 people, Russian news agency RIA Novosti has quoted the secretariat of the Moscow-led security bloc as saying.
These peacekeeping forces will stay in Kazakhstan for several days or weeks, RIA reported, citing the secretariat.
Kazakhstan, which spans a territory the size of Western Europe, borders Russia and China and sits atop colossal reserves of oil, natural gas, uranium and precious metals that make it strategically and economically important.
China’s President Xi Jinping has praised Tokayev for his “highly responsible” handling of the unrest in a message sent to his Kazakh counterpart, according to a report by state media.
“You decisively took strong measures at critical moments and quickly calmed down the situation, showing your position of responsibility and sense of duty as a politician, and of being highly responsible for your country and your people,” Xi told Tokayev in the message, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported.