Jalalabad , Kyrgyzstan: Violence ebbed on June 15 and people began emerging from their barricaded homes in Kyrgyzstan's ethnically torn south, as evidence mounted that days of brutal bloodletting had been deliberately organized to ignite long-running tensions between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks.
As humanitarian aid began to flow into a south depleted of supplies, the office of the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights said its investigators believed that the conflict may have been touched off by five coordinated attacks by separate groups of armed men last Thursday night in different parts of Osh, the largest city in the south.
Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the commissioner, said the attacks -- which left at least 100 dead and 100,000 or more Uzbeks as refugees -- were "orchestrated, targeted and well planned," not a spontaneous outbreak of ethnic violence. He did not mention any names, but the Kyrgyz provisional government blamed the country's deposed president, Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev.
Certainly on the now calmer streets, Mr. Bakiyev is the assumed culprit among Uzbeks, less for direct evidence than for having the motive and ability to manipulate the region's ethnic tensions. Ravshanoi Karimova, 37, an Uzbek who is a chef, said Uzbeks would continue to dread more violence if Mr. Bakiyev continued to cast a shadow.
"Our people need to know that there was a major war here," Ms. Karimova said at a charity stand where food was served. "Our children, and our children's children, need to know what happened here."
Mr. Bakiyev fled this region in April, taking up exile in Belarus. His opponents, though, have feared that he was not finished here, given his family's business interests and long hold on power in the south of this nation.
Kyrgyzstan houses both American and Russian military bases.
Mr. Bakiyev's opponents contend that he provoked the conflict between majority Kyrgyz and minority Uzbek to destabilize the fragile interim government and try to return to office. Mr. Bakiyev has denied any involvement.
Southern Kyrgyzstan, which borders Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, has long been an ethnic tinderbox. Mr. Bakiyev was a rising functionary in the Jalalabad region in 1990, during the last major spasm of violence between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks.
"The situation is obviously tense, and the Bakiyevs took those tensions and ignited them," said Omurbek Tekebayev, a senior official in the interim government, referring to the former president and members of his family.
Mr. Tekebayev pointed out that in May, avowed supporters of Mr. Bakiyev tried to seize government buildings in Jalalabad before they were repulsed.
Confronted by these accusations, Mr. Bakiyev has issued a stream of denials.
The provisional government has maintained that he has used his relatives in southern Kyrgyzstan to foment instability, but he said he was not speaking to them because he was worried about getting them into trouble.
"My brothers and my children have gone underground," he told reporters in Belarus.
At the same time, the detention in Britain on Sunday of Mr. Bakiyev's son, Maksim, seemed to deepen the speculation. The Kyrgyz authorities said they would ask London to extradite Maksim Bakiyev "for crimes committed on Kyrgyz territory." Maksim Bakiyev himself said he would seek political asylum.
Hostilities began late last week and have led to one of Central Asia's worst humanitarian crises in recent decades as marauding bands of Kyrgyz singled out Uzbek neighborhoods. The death toll is in the hundreds, and as many as 100,000 Uzbeks have fled their homes and are in makeshift camps on the border area between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
On Tuesday, with the south somewhat more quiet, some senior Kyrgyz officials said they wanted to withdraw their request to Russia to send troops to help maintain order.
"Two or three days ago, we thought that it was necessary," said the interim defense minister, Ismail Isakov. "But the forces that we have brought in have been able to create conditions for normalizing the situation."
Russia had not agreed to the request, saying that it should be considered by multinational organizations.
Also on Tuesday, government and relief agencies increased their efforts to help Uzbek refugees. A cargo plane carrying 40 tons of flour, pasta, cooking oil and other food landed at the Osh airport. At the border, where thousands of Uzbek refugees have been stranded without clean water or medical care, the International Committee of the Red Cross delivered medical supplies, blankets and tarpaulins. Officials in the capital, Bishkek, said they hoped the pace of aid delivery would steadily increase.
"This is our obligation," said Aleksandr Dulin, the flight manager aboard the Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane, during the 45-minute flight to Osh.
"People are starving, they are in desperate shape. They cannot feed themselves. There is not even a single loaf of bread."
On a visit to Jalalabad on Tuesday, people were going outside, often for the first time in several days, but they were greeted by disturbing sights.
It was not just the charred houses or the profane graffiti or the shuttered stores. It was also the trees. Uzbeks had cut them down and arrayed them like barricades in front of their homes to ward off marauding Kyrgyz, usually to no avail.
Even the Uzbek university was burned, as if to signal that future generations of Uzbeks had no place here.