Friday, March 25 2005 10:40 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bishkek: Thousands of anti-Government protestors stormed the Presidential Palace in Kyrgyzstan yesterday (Mar 24, 2005), forcing President Askar Akayev to flee this Central Asian country and the Opposition assuming power.

The President has signed a letter of resignation, Opposition leader Felix Kulov, who was released yesterday from the jail by his supporters, was quoted as saying by the ITAR-TASS news agency.

The Kyrgyz Opposition's Co-ordination Council has elected Ishinbay Kadirbekov as the acting head of the State, while the Council of Popular Unity has assumed the full power in the country following the collapse of the Akayev regime.

Akayev is reported to have fled the country aboard a US military plane, media reports said. Another Opposition leader Kurmanbek Bakiyev said on State television that Prime Minister Nikolai Tanayev has also resigned.

Meanwhile, Ria-Novosti reported that Kyrgyzstan's top court annulled last month's disputed parliamentary election that sparked the protests.

Earlier yesterday, the Opposition supporters flooded into the Presidential compound as police and para-military troops guarding the palace staged an organised withdrawal allowing them into the palace.

Later some of them were seen waving a flag from a second floor window and scattering documents and throwing out portraits of the President, Kyrgyz TV reports showed.

Some rampaged through the building, destroying furniture, throwing computers and air-conditioners out of the window. The TV has sided with the Opposition demanding the resignation of Akayev over last month's "rigged" polls.

Looting has started in the capital after the dusk. Several posh supermarkets and jewellery shops have been ransacked in the heart of Bishkek.

Meanwhile, the aircraft carrying Kyrgyz President Akayev landed in Kazakhstan's southern capital Almaty, according to Interfax.

Originally Akayev's plane left Bishkek and was en route for Russia but instead of landing in the Urals for refuelling it turned toward Kazakhstan, where Akayev's wife and other members of his family had arrived on a Kyrgyz Presidential helicopter reportedly on a private visit.

In a joint statement over the republic's TV last night, the Opposition leaders had announced that Akayev and his family members would be given full guarantees of their safety, "which are available in a democratic country".

The Opposition alliance was formed to restore the flow of constitution and democracy in the country amid the crisis, which could escalate into a civil war, Russia's Channel 1 TV reported.

Opposition includes local leaders who lost seats in the polls on February 27 and March 13. Protests are fuelled by dissatisfaction at the economy and rampant official corruption in one of the most backward republics of the ex-USSR bordering China in the east.

The events in the capital follow growing unrest in the south of the country, bordering Uzbekistan's volatile Ferghana Valley and Tajikistan.

Over the last weekend the protesters had overrun the Government buildings and airports in Osh and Jalal-Abad in the south of the country.