The official death toll due to unrest in Kazakhstan is 225 people

Kazakhstan’s prosecutor general’s office announced on Saturday that the death toll from last week’s unrest is now 225, including 19 members of the state security forces, Reuters report.

Government sources say more than 50,000 people were involved in the riots at their peak.

In a week of unrest, which began with a hike in the price of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and increasingly expressed discontent with the Kazakh government, protesters burned the presidential residence and stormed into its largest airport.

The government imposed an Internet ban, which has since been lifted, allowing people to share videos of the protest on social media.

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ordered security enemies to “shoot and kill without warning”, but also made efforts to appease the protesters. Tokayev rescinded the LPG price hike, removing former President Nursultan Nazarbayev – a dictator who ruled Kazakhstan from 1991 to 2019 – from his position on the country’s Security Council, and two former prime ministers. period and Nazarbayev’s ally Karim Massimov was accused of high treason.

The protests begin die when a predominantly Russian contingent from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, of which both Russia and Kazakhstan are members, arrived in the country.

The CSTO army begins Withdrawal from the former Soviet republic of Central Asia on Thursday and is expected to run out completely on January 23, New York Times report.