China has wrapped up an evacuation of its citizens from strife-torn Kyrgyzstan after flying home nearly 1,300 Chinese nationals, state media reported on Thursday.
The three-day operation ended early Thursday morning when a China Southern Airlines jet bearing 148 Chinese citizens landed in Urumqi, capital of China's Xinjiang region that borders central Asia, Xinhua news agency said.
The flight was the ninth since China began evacuating its people amid ethnic clashes that erupted last week between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the south of Kyrgyzstan, which have killed at least 190 people.
More than 7,000 Chinese nationals were living in the violence-torn Osh region when the clashes broke out, most of them businessmen but also some construction workers, according to China's state press.
There have so far been no reports of Chinese being killed in the clashes in the country's south, in which ethnic Kyrgyz gangs have attacked the shops and homes of ethnic Uzbeks.
Tens of thousands of ethnic Uzbeks have fled across the border into Uzbekistan.
The Kyrgyz interim government that toppled president Kurmanbek Bakiyev earlier this year has been unable to rein in the turmoil.
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