Re: Hundreds of demonstrators killed by police in Uzbekistan
**An estimated 500 bodies have been laid out in a school in the eastern Uzbek city where troops fired on a crowd of protesters to put down an uprising, a doctor said Sunday, corroborating witness accounts of hundreds killed in the fighting. **
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Karimov's hardline secular regime has a long history of repressing Muslims who worship outside state-approved mosques.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin telephoned Karimov on Saturday to express concern that the violence could destablize Central Asia, the Kremlin press service said in a statement.
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Uzbekistan hosts a U.S. air base in the Karshi-Khanabad region, 90 miles from the Afghan border, to support military operations in that country after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. The number of troops there has reached several thousand at times. The base is more than 430 miles southwest of Andijan.
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The White House on Saturday declined to comment, although press secretary Scott McClellan on Friday urged both the government and demonstrators to "exercise restraint."