The clashes yesterday were in the Yalangach neighborhood, just outside the city limits and off the road heading to the official home of President Islam Karimov.
A reporter noted signs of four separate clashes in the district: remnants from two suicide bombings on roads, a burned-out building riddled with bullet holes, and the bodies of at least five suspects splayed out in front of an apartment house.
The Interior Ministry said in a statement read on state-run TV that 20 terrorists and three police officers were killed in the confrontations, which began about 7:20 a.m., and that five police officers were wounded.
Twenty terrorists "blew themselves up using self-made explosive devices," the ministry said.
The statement didn't say how long the clashes lasted, but witnesses indicated that the explosions and shooting went on for several hours.
They began with a pair of suicide bombings.
Police stopped a small car, and two terrorists jumped out and detonated explosive-laden belts, killing themselves and three police officers and wounding five more, said a National Security Service officer who declined to give his name.
Down the road, a woman detonated explosives after refusing to heed police orders to stop approaching a bus, according to witnesses who said she set off the blast after officers shot her in the legs.
The suicide bomber was decapitated in the blast, said Hairniso Supiyeva, 64, whose front gate was pitted with shrapnel from the explosion. Three black-clad women who had been in a car with the bomber fled into an apartment building, sparking a five-hour standoff with them, other suspects, and police.
An Interior Ministry officer said 16 suspected terrorists -- 11 men and five women -- were killed in the apartment building.
Some were shot by police, but others killed themselves with grenades, said the officer, who refused to give his name. The bodies on the sidewalk appeared not to have been torn apart in an explosion.
