ALMARY, January 7. /TASS/. Shooting in downtown Almaty has subsided by Friday evening, a TASS correspondent reported from the site.
Whereas the sounds of shooting were constantly heard from the Republic Square in the center of the city, the situation has calmed down by the evening. The square is occupied by armed soldiers. Armored vehicles periodically leave the square to patrol neighboring streets.
A number of cars with dead people inside are seen in streets around the square. These cars came under gunfire in the nighttime. One such car is seen on the square. It is covered by a white cloth. It is note ruled out that there are dead bodies inside too.
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.