BBC News with David Austin

The International Red Cross says there are about 15,000 ethnic Uzbeks fleeing violence in Kyrgyzstan

mass

ed at the Uzbek border. Some 80,000 have already fled to Uzbekistan since last week when ethnic clashes erupted in southern Kyrgyzstan. Rupert Wingfield-Hayes sent this report from the city of Osh.

Nearly four days after the killing and burning began, bright orange flames are still

consuming

houses in the Uzbek neighbourhoods of Osh. The women and children have all fled. Only the men remain roaming the streets in gangs armed with clubs and knives. People here say the violence that has killed more than 120 people was absolutely not

spontaneous

. What happened here has the appearance of an ethnic

pogrom

. The large parts of the Kyrgyz half of the city have also been destroyed. Only

a handful of

troops are on the streets. Locals told us they

are now desperate for

the old colonial power Russia to send its troops to end the violence.

President Obama is making his fourth visit to the region worst affected by the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. He's compared the impact to the 9/11 attacks, saying it would

profoundly

change the way America thought about the environment and energy just as the attacks on 9/11 had shaped foreign policy. After visiting Mississippi, he travelled to Alabama where he said America's largest environmental disaster was being met with the largest ever environmental response. And he said although it would take time, he was confident it would be effective.