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Almay on verge of food shortages

Shops in the city’s suburbs open for a short while during the day but accept only cash

ALMATY, January 7. /TASS/. Nearly all shops in Kazakhstan’s Almaty are closed and the situation with food supplies is next to critical, a TASS correspondent reported from the site.

Shops in the city’s suburbs open for a short while during the day but accept only cash. Many cash machines are out of order or looted and people are queueing to the few one that are still operating. People complain of food shortages and the situation can hardly be remedied in the current situation.

Protests erupted in several Kazakh cities on January 2 to grow into mass riots with attacks on government buildings in many cities several days later. Thousands have been injured and fatalities have also been reported. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev asked help from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, or CSTO, a post-Soviet security bloc. CSTO peacekeepers have already been deployed to Kazakhstan. According to the Kazakh authorities, law and order had been restored in all of the country’s regions by the morning on January 7. However, the situation in Almaty is still very tense.

In an address to the nation, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said that around 20,000 bandits were operating in the city and their actions indicated that they had a coordinated plan of attacks on military, government and social facilities.