Well, the news has grown bigger than anyone might expect. By now CNN should have a good coverage of things here. 24.kg, being a pro-Bakiev media, would not disseminate anything in a crisis like this. Nor any of the national sites or papers during the past two days — they had been effectively blocked off.

Now they release the info bit by bit.

In brief: on April 6 the opposition stormed the local administration in Talas. The centre dispatched riot units to handle the situation. But the very next day the storm came in Bishkek.  Probably the opposition have been planning for this well in advance.

Crowds centered round the White House (Parliament House) and after a prolonged and bloody siege (more than 70 people have been reported killed) broke in. Bakiev and his entourage has flown to Osh and later to Jalalabad.

Roza Otunbaeva, the head of the opposition interim authority declared that all the government agencies would operate in the same mode as previously until a later decision.

There has been a lot of looting done — starting from the White House and ending with the Turkish-owned Narodny supermarkets chain. Our Department of Water Resources has been entered by the new authority’s representatives the other night almost forcefully and yesterday a new interim head been sounded, but at this point it is unclear who that could possibly be.

Myself, I’m back to the office only today. When I catch up with the situation in the department, i’ll try to let you know.

My kid’s school is in the same district area as the White House. When they dismissed the class that day, he went to his mate’s place who’s apartment is on Logvinenko-Kievskaya streets, right next to the Government square. When the crowds came there and the arsoning and shooting began, they were effectively shut off inside the apartment. My son and his mate’s family were watching things happen from their second-floor windows, including a truck smashing its way past the White House front gates and the driver reportedly getting shot by a sniper defending the perimeter.

I had to take take a taxi to get my son from the area (few people would venture in that area under the circumstances, and if they did they would charge triple rates, then it’s up to you whether you go or not.) The driver only got me as far as the Toktogul street line, which is next to Kievskaya, cause he could clearly see and hear shootings and the crowds and the cars on fire. So did I! That was a CNN coverage at its best! Shit!!!

So he wouldn’t go any further and I left him there having paid him in advance and having him promise not to leave for at least next 20 minutes. And then I went towards the crowds,and then among them and I heard bullets whizzing past somewhere in the square, but for me it could be anywhere three metres away. And I couldn’t spot my son anywhere around (we had agreed — actually it was his mate again and myself, cause by that time he had already stepped out of the apartment — he would be waiting for me at a “Bulldog” cafe, next to “Svetoch” shop or something, but I got things mixed, not quite familiar with the street layout in the area, and was effectively roaming the place from corner to corner trying to find him. And the young brat didn’t have a mobile on him, cause his old one was stolen from him half a month ago!

So the only thing I could do is call his mate’s number again and ask for the specific location. And there he stood, on an empty bus stop, a hooded, skinny figure of a teenager who was thrilled and scared at the same time of the thing around him that we, the Soviet-era folks, call a revolution, but elsewhere in the world people call madness and riot.

I barked at him: “Just follow me, fast” and we were heading back to where I left the driver. Luckily, the man was still there, we jumped into his car and were soon on our way back to the relative safety of the “micro-districts”, to a soundtrack of ever-intensifying shooting, grenade explosions and mad shouting, which was the peak of the coup-d’etat in Bishkek as we know now from the news.