国际英语新闻：Senior U.S. official in Kyrgyzstan for talks on unrest

BISHKEK, June 19 (Xinhua) -- A senior U.S. official has arrived in Kyrgyzstan to hold talks with the interim government on how to settle the current unrest in the south of the Central Asian country.

According to media reports, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake, who oversees South and Central Asian affairs at the U.S. State Department, is meeting with interim leader Roza Otunbayeva and other senior officials on the current situation in southern Kyrgyzstan.

Fresh violence broke out in mid-June in Kyrgyzstan's major southern city of Osh and later spread to the region of Jalalabad.

The official death toll stood at 191 as of Friday, but Otunbayeva said during an inspection tour to Osh the real number was likely 10 times higher as many of the victims were buried quickly in keeping with local tradition.

Xinhua reporters said violence had been subsiding since Wednesday, after armed troops were sent to patrol and separate the ethnic Uzbeks from the Kyrgyz communities.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), headed by John Holmes, said an estimated 100,000 refugees had fled to neighboring Uzbekistan, and 300,000 others displaced were still seeking aid within Kyrgyzstan, some crowding into villages near the Uzbek border.

Before arriving in Kyrgyzstan, Blake visited several refugee camps set up in Uzbekistan for ethnic Uzbeks who fled their homes in Kyrgyzstan.

Calling for an investigation into the unrest, Blake urged the Kyrgyz interim government to take immediate actions to stop the violence.