Kyrgyzstan yesterday buried several of those killed in the overthrow of the government, while security concerns prompted the US military to halt troop flights from its base in the Central Asian state.

Up to 10,000 mourners gathered on the edge of the burned-out Kyrgyz capital at a mass funeral to commemorate at least 78 people who died in protests last week during which troops fired on crowds besieging the presidential headquarters. "Those who died on 7 April are the heroes of Kyrgyzstan," Roza Otunbayeva, the interim government chief, told the crowd. "It was our duty to establish justice. Those who are being buried here today are all our children, the children of Kyrgyzstan."

Mourners carried coffins draped in the Kyrgyz national flag and clutched portraits of the dead at a memorial complex built in honour of the victims of executions ordered by Soviet leader Josef Stalin in the 1930s.