RFE/RL correspondent Nikolay Pavlov flew into Bishkek on June 16, then hitched a ride on a Kyrgyz military cargo plane carrying Kyrgyz border guards to Osh.
There he filmed burned-out homes and cars in the Cheremushki district of Osh on June 18. He spoke to a Ukrainian woman married to a Tajik whose home had been spared. The woman, Natalia Ramunshieva, told him that in the past her family and their Uzbek neighbors had lived together peacefully.
When the violence started she said masked men arrived in her neighborhood and started burning houses. They pounded on the door of their house and asked if they were Tajik or Russian. Since her husband was Tajik they were left alone.
Many houses have “Kyrgyz” written on them to spare them from the violence.
Pavlov encountered women and children walking on the road out of Osh heading to the Uzbek border. Up to 100,000 Uzbeks have fled to safety in Uzbekistan.
