By Maria Golovnina

SHYMKENT, Kazakhstan, June 26 (Reuters) A trial of 21 Kazakh doctors and officials accused of accidentally infecting dozens of babies with HIV entered a final stage today while a 10th child died as a result of the virus.

The health officials went on trial in the southern city of Shymkent in January on charges of criminal negligence causing the children to be infected mainly through transfusions of blood in hospitals.

The case has opened a new frontier in the spread of the AIDS virus in the ex-Soviet Central Asian state where the World Bank says the number of registered cases has almost doubled each year since 2000.

In a stuffy hall in the centre of Shymkent, a town on the ancient Silk Road, defendants looked down at the floor as Judge Ziyadinkhan Pirniyaz detailed the charges in a seven-hour address preceding the official verdict due tomorrow.

Relatives of the children listened attentively as Pirniyaz listed key accusations such as negligence, embezzlement of state health funds, extortion, as well as abusing patients and ignoring rising HIV/AIDS levels in the region.

''There have been a number of grave violations,'' the judge said. He then read out long lists of initials of the infected children, most of them born either in 2004 or 2005.

In the first case of this scale in the steppe nation of 15 million, at least 118 babies have been infected.

Today, a local AIDS centre said a 10th infected child, a boy born in 2005, died of an illness triggered by the virus in the south of the country.

Although negligence is one of the main charges, some of the families say basic corruption is the root cause.

All defendants have denied wrongdoing. It also remains a mystery why the suspected transfusions affected only children.

Defendants face sentences ranging from suspended jail terms to up to 10 years in prison, but families of infected children have complained the sentences are too soft.

Injecting drugs is the most common course of infection in Central Asia, the main route of drugs trafficking from Afghanistan to Europe. Crumbling Soviet-era hospitals and medical infrastructure are also contributing to the problem.

Kanat Alseitov, whose son is among the infected children, said he believed corruption was to blame.

''What is happening is a genocide,'' Alseitov, one of the few family members who agreed to speak to Reuters. ''I can only pray that justice will prevail.'' REUTERS GL VC2245