Kyrgyzstan's interim president has said the death toll from the ethnic unrest that has rocked the country's south could be near 2,000.
The country's health ministry figures place the number of killed in the rampages led mainly by ethnic Kyrgyz at 191.
"I would increase by ten times the official data on the number of people killed," said Roza Otunbayeva, the interim president, according to her spokesman, Farid Niyazov. She said current figures did not take into account those buried before sundown on the day of death, in keeping with Muslim tradition, according to the spokesman.
Mrs Otumbayeva arrived early on Friday by helicopter in the central square of Osh, a city of 250,000 where the violence began late last week. Parts of the city have been reduced to rubble by roving mobs of young Kyrgyz men who burned down Uzbek homes and attacked Uzbek-owned businesses.
About 400,000 people have been displaced by the unrest, according to UN estimates, with up to 100,000 Uzbeks fleeing into Uzbekistan.
Kyrgyz authorities have said the violence was sparked deliberately by associates of Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the president who was toppled in April in a bloody uprising. The UN has said the unrest appeared orchestrated but has stopped short of apportioning blame.
Ethnic Uzbeks on Thursday accused security forces of standing by or even helping ethnic-majority Kyrgyz mobs as they slaughtered people and burned down neighbourhoods.
Col. Iskander Ikramov, the chief of the Kyrgyz military in the south, rejected allegations of troop involvement in the riots but said the army didn't interfere in the conflict because it was not supposed to play the role of a police force.
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