20 police killed in Turkmenistan

Assailants killed 20 police in a clash in Turkmenistan's capital, the country's opposition in exile and other sources said Saturday.
Police battled "a religious group, possibly radical Islamists," according to a diplomatic source quoted by a website set up by opposition leader Boris Shikhmuradov, founder of Turkmenistan's Popular Democratic Movement.
"Witnesses said that 20 police were killed and their bodies were taken in secret to an Ashkhabad hospital," said the www.gund ogar.org website which is not accessible in Turkmenistan.
The report could not be officially confirmed. But residents of the Turkmenistan capita contacted by AFP confirmed that they heard heavy gunfire through the night, adding that Ashkhabad's northern suburbs were surrounded by police.
In Moscow, Arkady Dubnov, a reporter for the Vremya Novostei daily and expert on Central Asia, told AFP his Ashkhabad sources had informed him of "tanks and armored vehicles opening fire on a drinking water factory" in northern Ashkhabad where an armed group was hiding.