ANDIJAN, Uzbekistan - Thousands of terrified Uzbeks fled for the border Saturday but hundreds angrily returned to the square where police fired on demonstrators to put down an uprising against the country's authoritarian U.S.-allied leader. A human rights monitor said about 200 people were killed.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov said 10 government troops and "many more" protesters were killed but refused to be more specific. He spoke at a news conference in the capital Tashkent a day after the unprecedented clashes in his tightly controlled country, which he has led since before the 1991 Soviet collapse.

In the eastern city of Andijan, hundreds of protesters gathered at the square, displaying the bodies of six people killed in Friday's bloodshed and tearfully denouncing the government.

Big military trucks loaded with soldiers cruised the streets and troops backed by armored vehicles surrounded the heavily fortified police headquarters.