Kyrgyzstan's exiled former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev was sentenced in absentia Friday to life in prison and his assets confiscated for trying to put down anti-government protests in 2010.

Bakiyev fled the country with his family in the wake of the violent protests against corruption and soaring living costs in the former Soviet central Asian republic that left more than 80 people dead.

A Kyrgyz border guard received head injuries on Thursday following clashes near a disputed border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan that Bishkek blamed on Tajiks attempting to divert water from a river.

Kyrgyzstan's border service said in a statement that its guards came across several Tajiks building an unauthorized water pipeline in the latest incident in the tense Fergana valley region, which is uneasily shared by the Central Asian countries amid increasing water shortages.

The United States on Tuesday shut its airforce base in Kyrgyzstan that had been the main transit point for military personnel and cargo headed to Afghanistan for 12 years.

Washington was forced to shut the Manas Transit Center north of Bishkek after Kyrgyzstan, an ex-Soviet country seeking closer ties with Moscow, refused last year to extend its lease.

Kyrgyzstan police detained scores of people in the capital Bishkek Thursday as the opposition gathered for a rally to demand reforms.

About a thousand people gathered in a Bishkek park for the protest organised by the National Opposition Movement, which formed out of several smaller parties earlier this year.

The last words from a Malaysian passenger jet missing for 10 days were apparently spoken by the co-pilot, the airline said Monday, providing a glimpse into the crucial period when the plane was deliberately diverted.

Clarification that the voice was most likely that of First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid came during a press conference at which Malaysian officials hit back at "irresponsible" suggestions that they had misled the public -- and passengers' relatives -- over what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

President Vladimir Putin on Friday won the support of Iran and China at a regional summit on Russia's initiative for Syria to hand over its chemical weapons, which he said had proved the "serious intentions" of the Damascus regime.

Putin attended the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional security group sometimes seen as an eastern counterweight to NATO, in Kyrgyzstan a day after President Bashar Assad said he supported the Russian plan.

Kyrgyzstan on Friday declared a state of emergency after bloody clashes between security forces and protestors over the arrest of dozens of demonstrators who cut off power to a Canadian-owned gold mine they want nationalised.

Prosecutors said that 92 people were arrested when security forces moved in to disperse the protest over the Kumtor mine, retake control of an electrical substation and dismantle their tents.

Rescuers on Saturday said they had recovered the bodies of three U.S. crew members whose refueling plane crashed in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan shortly after taking off from a base that serves as a hub for military operations in Afghanistan.

The KC-135 Stratotanker with a crew of three -- believed to be carrying dozens of tonnes of fuel -- exploded and broke up midair before crashing around 98 kilometers (61 miles) from the capital Bishkek on Friday.

A military transport plane crashed in mountains with three crew members aboard shortly after taking off from a United States airbase in Kyrgyzstan on Friday, officials said, with so far no survivors found.

The C-130 American refueling plane fell in the northern Chuy province at around 2:55 pm local time (0855 GMT), the emergency ministry said.

The son of Kyrgyzstan's ousted president has been arrested in London after an extradition request from the United States, according to the Kyrgyz presidency and British diplomats.

The son of ex-president Kurmanbek Bakiyev had applied for asylum in Britain after Kyrgyzstan's new authorities accused him of embezzlement and abuse of power following his father's ouster in 2010 in violent street protests.