" Crowds of young Kyrgyz men surged towards a university associated with the Uzbek community on May 19. They got past a police cordon ringing the entrance gates, but were prevented from entering the university building after security guards put up stiff resistance. Shots were fired at this point, although it was unclear whether by one or both sides. An eyewitness on the scene told IWPR that this prompted the crowds to fall back. “When the first casualties happened, the crowd came out of the gate,” he said. Kyrgyzstan’s interim government declared a state of emergency and a night-time curfew in Jalalabad city and the nearby Suzak district, and accused allies of former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, ousted during mass protests last month, of masterminding the disturbances. Bakiyev is in exile in Belarus, but the authorities who replaced him believe his supporters are still trying to stage a coup. They have charged a number of Bakiyev-era officials for disturbances , when protesters briefly seized control of local government buildings in Jalalabad and Osh, the south’s biggest urban centre. “The interim government will not allow civil war,” said government member Temir Sariev, in remarks quoted by the online news agency 24.kg. Referring to Bakiyev supporters, he said, “At first they tried to confront the interim government, but when we resisted them, they began employing inter-ethnic conflict.” Events in Jalalabad represent a dangerous shift towards trouble between ethnic Kyrgyz and the sizeable Uzbek community.There were signs of trouble brewing on the morning of May 19, as thousands of people gathered at a race-track a couple of kilometres from the city. Among the eyewitnesses interviewed by IWPR, a local man said most of the people at the race-track were young, of Kyrgyz ethnicity, and as far as he knew, not local to the area. A correspondent with RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) said protesters were chanting slogans directed against Kadirjan Batirov, a businessman and politician regarded as the Uzbek community’s uncrowned leader, and an ally of the new government."