ALMATY, January 7. /TASS/. All gasoline stations in Kazakhstan’s Almaty are closed, with many taxi companies suspending their activities, a TASS correspondent reported from the site on Friday.

Only one filling station outside the city is open, with a queue of dozens of cars observed near it. Many taxi companies have suspended operation dur to fuel shortages and it is next to impossible to book a ride.

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.