“Dear compatriots, it is with an vast pain in our hearts that we inform you of the death of our dear president”, a state TV presenter said.
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Mr Karimov, 78, was pronounced dead late on Friday after he suffered a stroke the weekend before and fell into a coma, the authorities said, following days of speculation that officials were delaying making his death public.
Karimov was the head of the local Communist party in Uzbekistan when it was still a Soviet republic, and he remained at the helm after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
His funeral was to be held on Saturday in the historic town of Samarkand, where he was born, a government statement said, adding that a three-day period of mourning would start on the same day.
Central Asia analysts say a small circle of senior officials and Karimov family members will have been meeting behind closed doors to try to agree on anointing a new president.
Several opposition parties were allowed to participate in the December 1991 presidential election, which Karimov won with 86 percent of the vote; global observers, however, cast doubts on its legitimacy, with Human Rights Watch (HRW) calling it “seriously marred”.
Uzbekistan’s flag is flying at half-mast at the embassy’s building to mourn the passing of Islam Karimov.
Kazakhstan Today, a privately owned news agency, said Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Masimov was preparing for a visit to Samarkand on Saturday.
The two countries have close ethnic, cultural and linguistic ties.”Uzbek President Islam Karimov has died”.
President Putin addressed his message to Uzbek senate leader Nigmatulla Yuldashev who, under the constitution, becomes acting president pending early elections.
Karimov’s likely successor is not yet clear, but some names being touted in the media include Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Deputy Prime Minister and the country’s powerful security chief Rustam Inoyatov, who has held the post since 1995.
And he’s stayed in power by creating what human rights groups call one of the most repressive regimes in the world.
“Islam Karimov’s contribution to the establishments of relations of strategic partnership and allied relations between our countries can hardly be overestimated”, it said.
Law enforcement and security services grew increasingly powerful and abusive, and the use of torture in prisons was labeled “systematic” by worldwide observers.
Al Jazeera details a 2005 incident, in which government forces killed hundreds of demonstrators for speaking out against the government.
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But Karimov portrayed himself as guarantor of stability and bulwark against radical Islam on the borders of Afghanistan, crushing fundamentalist groups in the majority Muslim republic.
