IT was early afternoon when the mob surged down an alley of neat rose bushes and halted outside Zarifa's house. The Kyrgyz men broke into her courtyard and sat Zarifa down next to a cherry tree. They asked her a couple of questions.

After confirming she was an ethnic Uzbek, they raped her and cut off her fingers. After that they killed her and her small son, throwing their bodies into the street. They then moved on to the next house.

“They were like beasts,” Zarifa's neighbour, Bakhtir Irgayshon, said, pointing to the gutted bed-frame where she had been assaulted. A few pots and pans remained; the rest of the family home was a charred ruin. Zarifa's husband, Ilham, was missing, Irgayshon said, probably dead. Only his mother, Adina, survived the Kyrgyz-instigated conflagration that engulfed the neighbourhood of Cheremushki.

The scale of the ethnic killing that took place in Osh — as well as in other towns and villages in southern Kyrgyzstan — was grimly obvious. In the next street were the remains of another victim. He burned to death in his bed. Not much was left, only a jigsaw-like spine and hip. Nearby, Uzbek survivors were retrieving the bodies of seven small children. They had been incinerated, together with their mother, while cowering in a dark cellar.

Witnesses said the attacks by the Kyrgyz population on the Uzbek minority were attempted genocide.

The violence that erupted in Osh was possibly ignited by a row in a casino. But much of it appeared coordinated and planned, Uzbeks said. The attacks took the prosperous outlying Uzbek areas of town unawares.

“It started on Friday lunchtime,” said Rustam, an Uzbek lawyer. “It came in three distinct waves. The Kyrgyz entered Cheremushki district driving an armoured personnel carrier. This paved the way. Several of them were wearing army uniforms. At first we felt relieved. Someone had come to rescue us, we thought! Then [they] opened fire and started shooting people randomly.

“Behind them was the second wave. This was a mob of about 300 Kyrgyz youths armed with automatic weapons. Most were very young — between 15 and 20 years old. The third wave was made up of looters and included women and young boys. They stole everything of value, piling it into cars. Then they set our houses on fire.”

According to Rustam the official toll from the riots — 178 dead and 1,800 injured — is a woeful underestimate. In reality, around 2,000 Uzbeks were slaughtered, he said, as the pogroms quickly spread from Osh to Jalal-Abad, 25 miles away, and other Uzbek villages in the south. Rustam said “I carried 27 bodies myself. They were just bones. We are talking here about genocide.”

With the violence largely now spent, and only the occasional gunshot disturbing Osh's evening curfew, survivors debated who was to blame. Some suggested Kyrgyzstan's ousted president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was behind [it], describing the violence as a premeditated attempt by him to take revenge on the new leadership. Bakiyev fled the country in April after bloody protests in the capital, Bishkek. His supporters remain in control in much of the south. They dominate Osh's mono-ethnic Kyrgyz police and power structures, and also control the local mayor's office.

Few believe the riots could have taken place without the local administration's connivance. But it is clear that other grievances are at play. Ethnic Uzbeks make up 15 per cent of Kyrgyzstan's 5.6 million population and dominate the towns of Osh and Jalal-Abad. These settlements near the Fergana valley ended up in Kyrgyzstan by accident, when Lenin dumped them there in 1924.

Rustam acknowledged that the town's Uzbeks were usually better off than their Kyrgyz neighbours. “Since the Silk Road, we've been involved in commerce and trade. We are successful. The Kyrgyz resent this.”

When the trouble started, thousands of Uzbeks fled to the Uzbekistan border, just three miles from Osh. Not everyone made it one witness described how two Uzbek youths drove into a Kyrgyz mob in the centre of town. “They pulled the two Uzbek boys out of the car, and killed them in less than five minutes using sticks and knives. Then they dumped them in the Ak-Bura river,” said Maya Tashbolotova, who watched, peering over the fence of her guesthouse.

So far, tens of thousands of refugees have crossed into Uzbekistan. According to Unicef, 90 per cent of them are children.

There has not been much sign of humanitarian relief, with Kyrgyz drivers too scared to enter Uzbek neighbourhoods. Uzbeks had demarcated their territory by felling maple trees and building makeshift barricades with burned-out cars. Nearby, Kyrgyz soldiers had set up checkpoints in a post-facto show of strength. Some Kyrgyz locals blamed the riots on Uzbek youths, who they said ransacked a local casino in a dispute over money.

— The Guardian, London