Authorities in Kazakhstan announced Wednesday that they had detained 1,678 more people in the last 24 hours for their alleged involvement in the violent upheaval that shook the former Soviet republic last week, the worst since the country’s independence three decades ago.

The new detentions, which were announced by officials in Almaty, the country’s largest city and the epicenter of the unrest, pushed the overall number of arrests to above 12,000. More than 300 criminal proceedings involving public disturbance and police officer assaults have been launched.

Protests over skyrocketing fuel costs began on Jan. 2 in the 19-million-strong oil-and-gas-rich Central Asian republic, soon spreading across the country, with political chants reflecting broader unhappiness with the country’s authoritarian administration.

As the disturbance grew, authorities attempted to appease the demonstrators by announcing a 180-day price restriction on gasoline. The ministerial Cabinet resigned, and the country’s former longstanding leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, was removed from his powerful job as head of the National Security Council.

Despite this, the protests became violent over the next few days, with dozens of civilians and law police officers killed.

Protesters set fire to government buildings and briefly seized the airport in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s former capital and largest city. Last weekend’s unrest was mostly subdued.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has blamed the unrest on foreign-backed “terrorists” and demanded assistance from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, or CSTO, a Russia-led military coalition of six ex-Soviet states. The bloc agreed to send 2,500 troops to Kazakhstan.

Tokayev announced on Tuesday that the CSTO will begin removing its troops this week, claiming that their mission has been finished and that the situation in the nation has stabilized.

Image Credit: AP

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