They were looters and other criminals, the Kazakh media reported on Wednesday, citing the city administration in the metropolis in the southeast of the Central Asian country.
The number of arrests nationwide was last given as around 10,000. Human rights activists warned that the authoritarian-led ex-Soviet republic must guarantee fair trials. The situation in Kazakhstan recently appeared to have stabilized again.
In the oil and gas-rich country on the border with Russia, displeasure about the rise in fuel prices had turned into protests against the government about a week ago. After peaceful demonstrations, violent riots broke out for days. President Kassym-Shomart Tokayev spoke of an attempted “coup d’état”, which was also controlled from abroad. He set up a new government and let the military take action against demonstrators.
Experts believe that the president also used the crisis to overthrow his predecessor, the influential ex-long-term president Nursultan Nazarbayev. It is still unclear who the armed rioters were who stormed administration buildings and police stations, especially in Almaty. Tokayev spoke of “terrorists” several times.