Detectives probing incident in border area of northern Kyrgyzstan
BISHKEK. Jan 24 (Interfax) - The Kyrgyz police are working on the identification of eleven men killed by border guards in the Issyk-Kul region of northern Kyrgyzstan.
The investigative task force of the State Committee for National Security, the Interior Ministry and the Military Prosecutor's office is operating on the site where the unknown men refused to surrender and were killed by border guards in the evening of January 23, State Border Service spokesperson Gulmira Borubayeva told Interfax on Friday.
The task force is due "to discover the causes and circumstances of the incident and to identify the unknown men who killed a Kyrgyz citizen and engaged in an armed confrontation with a border detail of the Issyk-Kul border unit," she said.
Servicemen of the State Border Service neutralized the unknown assailants without support from other law enforcement agencies, the spokesperson said.
A border detail had a shootout with unknown men who reportedly killed a huntsman and seized his weapon in the Ak-Shiyrak section controlled by the Issyk-Kul border unit, 40 kilometers away from the Kyrgyz-Chinese border, on January 23. Two men were killed in the gunfire exchange and the others were trapped by border guards in Pikertyk. The entire group was eliminated in the evening of January 23.
Sources from the law enforcement authorities did not rule out that the group might have illegally crossed the border from China and belonged to a separatist Uyghur group.