Kyrgyzstan’s new leaders have frozen the national banking system, saying the Central Asian country’s ousted president emptied the state coffers before fleeing, a senior interim official said.

“The state coffers are almost empty. All the funds have been transferred. That is why we have frozen the banking system,” said Edil Baisalov, the new chief of staff for interim leader Roza Otunbayeva.

“We are afraid that the banks under [president Kurmanbek] Bakiyev’s control will take funds out of the country.”

The coffers of the impoverished ex-Soviet state now hold only 986 million Kyrgyz soms (approximate $23 million), he said.

“We have uncovered irrefutable proof of a criminal organization led by Bakiyev.”

Mr Baisalov also insisted that Mr Bakiyev had given the final nod for security forces to open fire on opposition protesters in the capital Bishkek this week, where at least 76 people died in riots.

Janysh Bakiyev, the son of the ousted Kyrgyz leader and former head of his presidential guard, gave the order but there was “no doubt” that Kurmanbek Bakiyev knew of it, he said.

“We have irrefutable proof and detailed confessions from officials… that Janysh Bakiyev gave the order to shoot to kill and that president Bakiyev knew of it,” he said.

Mr Bakiyev said on Friday that he had no intention of resigning and blamed the country’s new self-proclaimed leadership for causing the deaths of protesters this week.

“Those people who organised armed men to storm the White House have blood on their hands. It’s the opposition whose hands are bloody,” Mr Bakiyev, said at a house in the southern city of Jalalabad where he has taken refuge.

Dead mourned

Thousands massed in Kyrgyzstan’s capital on Friday to honour scores of people killed in the uprising that toppled President Kurmanbek Bakiyev who said the new leadership had “blood on their hands”.

Mourners in Bishkek’s main square prayed and laid a sea of flowers at the scene of the protests as part of the official day of mourning for the dead, said to number at least 75, with more than 1,500 injured.

Fresh automatic weapon fire rang out Thursday night, adding to the tensions.

Mr Bakiyev said neither Russia nor the United States, both of which maintain military facilities in the strategic Central Asian republic, played any role in the upheaval this week.

He said he had no intention of leaving Kyrgyzstan or of resigning, as the country’s self-styled new leadership has demanded, but said he was ready “to sit down with the opposition at the negotiating table.”

Talks ruled out

The interim government, headed by former foreign minister Roza Otunbayeva, swiftly ruled out any talks and said that Mr Bakiyev was simply seeking to restore his five-year grip on power.

“What terms could he want to resign when more than 1,000 patriots suffered” in the violence, Ms Otunbayeva told journalists.

“We in Bishkek are trying to bring the situation under control.”

In the capital, the government headquarters and presidency, wrecked by looters, remained locked up. The authorities removed burnt-out cars and vans that rioters had used as battering rams to storm the buildings.

At least 49 people were hospitalised over the past 24 hours, health ministry officials told AFP Friday, complaining that looters were impeding ambulances trying to help the injured.

The interim interior minister ordered looters to be shot on sight, after pillaging that accompanied the riots, including at Mr Bakiyev’s residence where everything from radiators to plants was taken.

“Special means and gunfire were used against looters and rioters” early Friday, the ministry said, calling on families of the rioters to “persuade them off the way of crime.”

The new rulers have announced plans for presidential elections in six months and the disbanding of parliament, with Otunbayeva saying a US airbase vital for sending supplies to Afghanistan would remain open.

The US embassy in Bishkek closed its doors to the public Friday and appealed for calm.

Russia, still the key player in the former Soviet republic, and the European Union have vowed to support Kyrgyzstan’s interim government.

EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton will dispatch a special representative to Bishkek to help reach a peaceful solution to the crisis, her office said Friday.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is also sending an envoy.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kyrgyzstan has been plagued by corruption and chronic instability, with former communist functionary Mr Bakiyev coming to power in the so-called “Tulip Revolution” of 2005.

This week’s uprising was the culmination of growing opposition anger fuelled by widespread fraud and irregularities in last year’s presidential polls.