At least two people have been killed and 17 injured during fresh clashes in southern Kyrgyzstan, a police spokesman told the news agency Akipress on Monday.
Fights broke out between the Kyrgyz military and members of the Uzbek minority in the city of Osh, which has been at the centre of the violence which has rocked the country for the past two weeks, DPA reported.
The soldiers had demanded that the Uzbeks take down their homemade barricades and give up their weapons, the spokesman said. When they refused the soldiers marched in, sparking the ethnic clash.
But in another visit to the region interim President Rosa Otunbayeva emphasised her wish that a planned referendum on constitutional reform go ahead on Sunday as planned.
It is thought that around 2,000 people have been killed so far in the unrest. Some 400,000 have fled their homes, with around 100,000 of those in neighbouring Uzbekistan.