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Anchor Marco Werman speaks with BBC correspondent Rayhan Dymetrie in Uzbekistan, where ethnic clashes have left more than 100 people dead. Members of the Uzbek minority say they’ve been targeted in the violence.

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MARCO WERMAN:  U.S. authorities are watching with concern as ethnic tensions in the southern part of Kyrgyzstan have turned deadly.  More than 100 people have been killed.  Members of the Uzbek minority say they’ve been targeted in the violence and some 100,000 people are reportedly trying to flee.  Many made it across the border to Uzbekistan.  The BBC’s Rayhan Dymetrie is in the Kyrgyz city of Osh.  Earlier she crossed into Uzbekistan to see the refugee camps.

RAYHAN DYMETRIE:  We’ve just been to one camp which houses up to 800 people.  They are mainly women, children and lots of elderly people, all those refugees they’re quite traumatized.  They’re desperate to know what’s happening on the other side of the border.  They’re desperate to know what’s happening to their male relatives, to their husbands, sons and brothers because all these men, they stayed behind in the city of Osh trying to defend their homes.

WERMAN: Rayhan, there are now reports that Uzbekistan has ordered its border closed to these refugees.  Did you see people being turned back?  Have you heard anything new about this order?

DYMETRIE: Those who want to cross the border, they just start on the Kyrgyz side and every time they see Uzbek border guards, they start shouting help, help, please help us.  And they’re hoping that they can get through, but we’re hearing reports that officials in Uzbekistan said that they cannot house anymore refugees.  They are actually appealing to the international community asking to help with the exodus of people from southern Kyrgyzstan.

WERMAN: Who are the mostly women and children who fled Kyrgyzstan and who are the people attacking their homes?

DYMETRIE: Those people who are on the Kyrgyz border and also those who made their way to safety in Uzbekistan, they are all ethnic Uzbeks.  They’ve been leaving with Kyrgyz, ethnic Kyrgyz, side by side for many years, but now what we’re witnessing now is perhaps one of the worst ethnic clashes between the two ethnicities.

WERMAN: What was the spark, Rayhan that ignited these latest clashes?

DYMETRIE: The spark was reportedly just a very small scale skirmishes between the two opposing groups of youth, ethnic Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbeks.  But within hours it all turned into this massive chaotic situation and that suggests, and this is what they interim government officials here in Kyrgyzstan are saying, that this whole event suggests that somebody is orchestrating it because how come people had so many weapons?  How come so many people were injured and shot dead?  So there is no official statement saying what happened, what exactly happened because the conflict escalated so quickly.  What the interim government is trying to deal with now is just to try and stop people killing each other.

WERMAN: The BBC’s Central Asia correspondent Rayhan Dymetrie in the city of Osh, Kyrgyzstan, thank you very much.

DYMETRIE: Thank you Marco.

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