Turkmen authorities admit to 15 blast deaths

Ashgabat (AFP) July 10, 2011

Authorities in reclusive Turkmenistan admitted Sunday that 15 people were killed in a series of blasts last week that left a village on the outskirts of the capital in ruins.

The toll was the first reported by the Central Asian republic's authorities since Thursday's accident and contradicted claims from the Turkmen opposition living abroad of up some 200 fatalities.

But the republic's strongman leader said in rare remarks that the village Abadan would have to be rebuilt from the ground up.

"In place of the old Abadan -- a satellite city of the Turkmen capital -- an essentially new city will be built," TDH quoted the republic's strongman leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov as saying.

TDH said the toll included two servicemen and 13 civilians.

It added that the initial blast went off at a fireworks storage facility and that flying debris later hit a munitions dump "storing Soviet-era explosives and armaments that were awaiting dismantlement."

Members of the opposition said the village was home to a Soviet-era military air field used in the 1980s during the war in Afghanistan.

Satellite images of the area showed high-rise apartment buildings standing in close proximity to the military base.

The opposition Ferghana.ru site showed pictures of shattered houses and cited witnesses as saying that bodies littered the street in the initial hours after the blasts.

Turkmenistan filed a formal protest with Russian on Friday for allowing its media to report the opposition claims.

The incident in the energy-rich republic -- which the United States has described as an authoritarian state -- had been barely mentioned by the Kazakh authorities since it occurred.

But it prompted a series of unusual steps from the Berdymukhamedov that included a surprise offer for opposition figures living abroad to take part in presidential elections scheduled for February.

The president followed that up on Saturday by inviting his entire government and all senior media representatives to leave the capital and take a 10-day vacation.

Berdymukhamedov did not explain his move.

Sunday's state news report said the president had delivered a "sharp reprimand" to his defense minister and reduced his ranks to colonel. He also threatened to court martial military officials responsible for the munitions dump blaze.

But the statement that the life in the village was quickly returning to normal and basic communications had been restored.

The desert republic had been ruled until 2006 by a bizarre personality cult developed around Saparmurat Niyazov -- a despot who named months after family members and was accused of amassing a vast personal wealth.

Berdymukhamedov had taken gradual steps to remove some of the more striking features of Niyazov's rule and also indicated a readiness to mend ties with the United States.

He formally ended the single-party state era in Turkmenistan in 2010, but the move made no perceptible difference to his grip on power.

The leaders of the opposition now live abroad, in Western Europe and Russia, and one top foe of Niyazov told AFP on Saturday that he suspected 600 political prisoners were still locked up in Turkmen prisons today.

"It would be naive to listen to the promises of the president and to return to the country," Nurmukhammed Khanamov told AFP be telephone from Austria. "We would be thrown in prison."

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Turkmen_authorities_admit_to_15_blast_deaths_999.html.