A plaintive siren wails as a government unit, invisible in the darkness, patrols. "We will shoot anyone on the streets. Military curfew. Do not leave your homes," comes the clipped command in Russian over the loudspeaker. A round of tank-artillery fire rings out. A machinegun crackles a response. This is "calm", of a sort, after the bloody mayhem of inter-ethnic violence between the Kyrgyz majority and the Uzbek minority that broke out in southern Kyrgyzstan on June 10th. But in Osh, as elsewhere, the wounds that have been opened may take generations to heal.
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