OSH, Kyrgyzstan,  (Reuters) – At least 46 people were  killed yesterday when ethnic conflict flared in Kyrgyzstan’s  second-largest city Osh, the worst outbreak of violence in the  Central Asian state since the president was overthrown in April.

The interim government in Kyrgyzstan, which hosts U.S. and  Russian military bases, declared a state of emergency in Osh and  several local rural districts after hundreds of youths battled  with guns and steel bars, setting shops ablaze in the city.

A spokeswoman for the Kyrgyz Health Ministry said 646 people  had been injured, 419 of whom were in hospital.

A Reuters correspondent said an Uzbek neighbourhood,  Cheryomushki, was ablaze. She said she had seen clashes between  ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, many people building barricades and a  crowd setting fire to two large restaurants and a supermarket.

The government, led by Roza Otunbayeva, sent troops and  armoured vehicles to quell gangs roaming the streets with  sticks, stones and petrol bombs after a night of violence.

“Regrettably for us, we’re clearly talking about a stand-off  between two ethnicities. We need (to muster) forces and means to  stop and calm these people down, and this is what we are doing  right now,” Otunbayeva told reporters in the capital Bishkek.

Otunbayeva said crowds of “weird and suspicious-looking  people” were streaming to Osh “from all directions”. She did not  mention their ethnicity. Political tensions between the south  and the north exist alongside ethnic and clan rivalries.

Government spokesman Farid Niyazov told Reuters overnight that the troops “were having a hard time trying to  control the situation, they are not succeeding”.

Skirmishes were also happening in the capital Bishkek, some  300 km (186 miles) from Osh, he said by telephone.

A Reuters witness saw around 50 unarmed men, many apparently  intoxicated, near Bishkek parliament shouting at policemen.

The European Union called on Otunbayeva’s government “to  restore public order with lawful means,” its high representative  for foreign affairs, Catherine Ashton, said in a statement.

Europe’s main democracy watchdog, the Organisation for  Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which neighbouring  Kazakhstan currently chairs, warned in a statement that the  violence shows the country “remains far from stable”.

The violence occurred in the southern power base of former  President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, deposed in April by a popular  revolt. Bakiyev’s supporters briefly seized government buildings  in the south on May 13, defying central authorities in Bishkek.

Renewed turmoil in the impoverished former Soviet republic  will fuel concern among regional players Russia, China, and the  United States which uses its air base in the north — about 300  km (190 miles) from Osh — as an Afghan supply route.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told a regional security  summit in the Uzbek capital Tashkent that Moscow wanted a swift  end to the unrest. Chinese leader Hu Jintao echoed him, saying,  “China continues to help Kyrgyzstan as much as it can.” Medvedev said later the Moscow-led security pact of former  Soviet states, known as the ODKB, could not intervene in  Kyrgyzstan because this conflict was an internal affair.

Officials said the riots were sparked by a fight, possibly  in a casino, which rapidly escalated into ethnic clashes.

Kyrgyzstan, which won independence with the collapse of the  Soviet Union in 1991, has been in turmoil since the revolt that  toppled Bakiyev on April 7, kindling fears of civil war.

Ethnic unrest between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks is a concern in the  Fergana valley where Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan meet. Hundreds of  people were killed in ethnic clashes near Osh, a city of over  200,000, in 1990.