Chinese Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Hong Jiuyin had an urgent meeting again on Saturday with Kyrgyz Deputy Foreign Minister Zheenbek Kulubayev over a murder case in which 19 Chinese citizens died when traveling home from Kyrgyzstan to China on a bus that was set ablaze.

During the meeting, Kulubayev said the Kyrgyz side has lost no time in carrying out autopsies on the bodies of the Chinese victims.

While the job was quite difficult, he said, the Kyrgyz side has already finished forensic examinations of the bodies of 17 of the dead Chinese citizens.

Kulubayev said the Kyrgyz side will work harder and try to finish the rest of the work in two or three days.

Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev and Prime Minister Nikolai Tanayev have once again ordered all the departments concerned to take every measure to finish the forensic work as soon as possible, according to the Kyrgyz official.

Once the work has been completed, the Kyrgyz side will assist the Chinese side in bringing the bodies back to China.

He said Kyrgyzstan's Ministry of Interior Affairs, the National Security Service and procuratorial authorities are also speeding up the handling of related matters.

All the 21 passengers aboard the bus were killed in the incident on Thursday.

The bus was traveling between the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek and the Chinese city of Kashi, Xinjiang.

(Xinhua News Agency March 30, 2003)