Policeman killed, three injured in Kyrgyz violence

BISHKEK, July 10 (Reuters) Gunmen in southern Kyrgyzstan killed a traffic policeman in the early hours today, triggering a chase involving several hundred police and soldiers backed by armoured personnel carriers, police said.

The officer was shot after he stopped a car to inspect it in the centre of the southern town of Jalalabad. He was injured and died later in hospital.

Hours later, two other policeman attempting to arrest an armed group of men on the edge of town were injured by automatic gunfire, as was a pedestrian, police spokeswoman Aida Bakirova said.

The armed men, with the police and soldiers in pursuit, were heading in the direction of neighbouring Uzbekistan, Bakirova said.

The mountainous Central Asian state, which lies along a main route for drug trafficking from Afghanistan, has seen an upsurge in violent crime since former President Askar Akayev fled from violent protests against election rigging in March 2005.

In May, a heavily armed gang from southern Kyrgyzstan ransacked two border posts in neighbouring Tajikistan in violence that killed 13 people.

Kyrgyzstan's security forces said they believed that raid was the work of Islamist ''international terrorists'' because they found religious literature among the gang's possessions, although it was not clear what the motive for the attack was.

REUTERS KD RS1514